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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 

ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION 



WORKS OF WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS. 



THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY : A Thousand Years 
OF Exploration and the Unveiling of Conti- 
nents. 305 pages. With five full-page pictures by 
Frank T. Merrill. Cloth, gilt top. i2mo. $1.50. 

THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION : 

How the Foundation Stones of Our History 
were Laid. 295 pages. With five full-page pictures by 
Frank T. Merrill. Cloth, gilt top. 12010. $1.50. 

IN PREPARATION. 

THE ROMANCE OF CONQUEST : The Triumphs of 
American Arms and Diplomacy. Illustrated. Cloth, 
gilt top. i2mo. $1.50. 




WASHINGTON'S FIRST COMMAND. 



The Romance of American 
Colonization 



MOM/' THE FOUNDATION STONES OF OUR 
HISTORY IV ERE LAID 



WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS 

MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 

AUTHOR OF "THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE," "BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND' 

"THE PILGRIMS IN THEIR THREE HOMES," "THE 

ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

FRANK T. MERRILL 




BOSTON AND CHICAGO 
W. A. WILDE & COMPANY 



1-/8? 



i2{^m 



Copyright, 1898, 

By W. a. Wilde & Company. 

All rights reserved. 



THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 




TWOCOPlPSfiFCEIVED. 




2n 



1.^9P,. 



TO THE 

"Brotfjcr 53o20" 
STANTON AND JOHN 

MAY THEY INHERIT THE VIRTUES 

AND AVOID THE VICES 

OF THEIR 

ENGLISH ANCESTORS 



PREFACE. 



The foundations of the American Commonwealth, as 
laid by Divine Providence, are broader and deeper than 
the average writer of our national history seems to have 
perceived. Our country is not a new England. It is a 
new and better Europe, dominated by that kind of Chris- 
tianity which is all the purer because of freedom from 
political control. To the making of the nation many 
peoples contributed by sending their sons and daughters 
with varied gifts of race and temperament, as well as 
with faith, moral fibre, ideas, and experience. 

In "The Romance of American Colonization," omitting 
military matters, the story from Sir Walter Raleigh to 
July 4, 1776, is briefly told. Less stress has been laid 
upon mere political enactments and the doings of kings 
and princes, and more upon the work of the people them- 
selves. The purpose has rather been to show what the 
real builders of the nation have done. 

It is not forgotten that Swiss, German, Dutch, French, 
Walloon, Scandinavian, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish, as well 
as English, helped to make our country. Christian and 

7 



5 PREFACE. 

Jew, Catholic and Protestant, political and free church- 
men, Puritan and Lutheran, believers and skeptics, the 
Indian and the Negro, have borne each his part in the 
making of colonial America. 

If it appears in this book that to the Middle region is 
given an importance equal to the Eastern or Southern, 
that our fathers took most of their political precedents 
from a republic and not from a monarchy, that our gen- 
eral procedure is adapted from democratic rather than 
aristocratic communities, that our religion is continued 
from free rather than political churches, that the emi- 
gration of the Scotch-Irish exerted an influence second 
to none other, that the Catholics have been a nobly con- 
servative force, and that in the American composite the 
continental as well as the insular elements have been 
potent leaven for freedom and righteousness, it is because 
the facts seem to warrant the statements made. 

What a wonderful process of sifting and filtering, of 
being poured from vessel to vessel, was that among the 
nations of northern Europe, which gave us under God the 
mother-liquid out of which has crystallized the republic of 

the United States of America ! 

W. E. G. 
Ithaca, N.Y., June, 1898. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 

I. What is a Colony? .... 

II. The Domain of the Virgin Queen . 

III. Tobacco, Brides, and Black Servants 

IV. Lively Politics in the Old Dominion 
V. The Walloons in New Netherland . 

VI. Our Dutch Forefathers 

VII. The Three Van Curlers 

VIII. The Free Churchmen in Europe and America 

IX. In the Land where Conscience was Free 

X. Plymouth Plantation 

XL The Great Puritan Exodus .... 

XII. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire 

XIII. Maryland and Catholic Liberality . 

XIV. The Carolinas 

XV. Georgia, the Last of the Thirteen Colonies . 

XVI. William Penn and the Jerseys .... 

XVII. Penn's Experiment of a Godly Commonwealth 

XVIII. New Sweden and Delaware .... 

XIX. Germanic or Latin Civilization in North America? 

XX. Governor Leisler, the Huguenots, and the Royal 

Wars 

9 



PAGE 
13 
25 

37 
48 

55 
71 

82 

94 
107 
116 
129 

147 
162 
169 
177 
183 
193 
202 
209 



lO TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXI. The Mohawk Valley and the Palatine Germans . 232 

XXII. The Scotch-Irish Emigration . . . . . . 239 

XXIII. Washington, the Colonial Frontiersman , . . 246 

XXIV. Fall of the French Power in America . . . 253 
XXV. Lawful Resistance to Unlawful Taxation . . . 262 

XXVI. Golden Hill, Alamance, and the Boston Massacre . 271 

XXVII. "I WILL Maintain" 277 

XXVIII. July 4, 1776, and the United States of America . 288 



LLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 



Washington's First Command . . . Frontispiece 249 

" John Rolfe married Pocahontas, the daughter of Pow- 
hatan "......... 39 

" The trumpeter was a striking and picturesque figure " . 84 

"' What cheer?' " 138 

WiUiam Penn taking formal possession of Pennsylvania . 194 



THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN 
COLONIZATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHAT IS A COLONY? 

WHAT is a colony ? 
Down at the roots, the idea of a colony is 
that of a company of people away from their old 
home, who are cultivating the soil. True colonists 
are first of all farmers. There may be sailors, sol- 
diers, priests, political rulers ; but unless there are 
tillers of the soil who expect to make the new coun- 
try their home, there is no true colony, A garrison, 
a body of traders, a governor and his staff of officers, 
do not make a colony. People who emigrate, but 
expect to stay awhile and then go back home again, 
will never make a settlement that will grow into a 
, state. A true colony begins when men make the 
earth on which they dwell support them. 

There were not a few colonies in the ancient 
world. The mythology of many nations teaches 



14 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

that their ancestors grew out of the soil, but history- 
shows that they came from other countries. Asia 
and Europe were colonized as well as America. The 
story of the colonization of Korea, Japan, and India 
is quite well, and that of China fairly, known. 

The most ancient voyage of discovery mentioned 
by the classic poets and myth-makers is that of the 
ship Argo, before the Trojan War. Under com- 
mand of Jason, the Argonauts sailed to Colchis on 
the Euxine Sea to recover the Golden Fleece, which 
was guarded by a sleepless dragon. Hercules, 
Theseus, Castor, Pollux, and Orpheus were among 
the famous heroes in the crew. How they tamed 
the fire-breathing bulls, slew the dragon, sowed its 
teeth, won the fleece, and escaped the sirens is told 
in the lovely Grecian fairy lore. In plain prose, all 
this means that after a rough voyage and many 
adventures a band of colonists broke up the hard 
soil with the plough, sowed their seed, suffered 
many terrors, but persevered until the golden fleece, 
in the form of a harvest of ripe grain, covered the 
landscape. They succeeded in colonization and 
then began trade. Our American history, though 
real, is a much more wonderful story, and the golden 
fleece of our national prosperity a thousand-fold 
richer. 

Greece was one of the first countries in Europe 
to be civilized, because it was nearest to the old 



WHAT IS A COLONY? 1 5 

seats of civilization in Egypt and Syria. Through 
the Trojan War the Greeks became acquainted with 
Asia and its riches. When the Hellenic states 
became overcrowded, colonization began by public 
act. The poor and the discontented, among whom 
there were many dangerous characters, who were 
yet brave and enterprising, were shipped to other 
lands to form Greater Greece. These led to the 
enterprises which lined the coast of Asia Minor 
with settlements that grew into rich and flourishing- 
cities. Shut up by their mountains on the north, 
the Greeks were free upon the sea. Sailing in 
every direction, they located in the Crimea, upon 
the coasts of Italy, and even in France, Spain, and 
Africa. 

The emio^rants took from their old homes fire 
kindled on the city hearthstone, and remembered 
the traditions of heroism and religion taught them 
by their fathers and mothers. A typical Greek city 
on the Mediterranean lay midway between the deep 
blue sea in front and the wheat fields, orchards, and 
groves on land, and often in rich valley or at the 
mouth of a river. Reared at first of wood, it be- 
came in time a orlorious mass of brick and marble. 

With agriculture, industry, and commerce, there 
grew up a Greek world. These colonists, looking 
with reverence upon the mother country, still re- 
garded themselves as Greeks. Their language was 



1 6 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

one. Their common book was Homer. Their 
method of government was federal. The several 
states were represented in the Congress called the 
Amphictyonic League. At the public games any 
Greek, from the Black Sea region to the Iberian 
peninsula guarded by the Pillars of Hercules, could 
contend with full rights. Glorious was the history 
of the Greek colonists during a thousand years. 

The Romans developed colonial enterprises on a 
grand scale. From them we get the word " colony," 
though we must add Greek to get " colonize " and 
" colonization." A colony was a collection of coloiii 
or farmers in a new land. The root-idea of a col- 
onist was that he was a colomis, or husbandman who 
tilled the soil and dwelt upon it. The words " col- 
ony," " cultivate," " cult," and " culture " have all 
the same root, which, back in the ancient Sanskrit 
tongue, is probably kal, which means to drive. As 
the root-idea of father is that of protector, of mother 
manager, and of daughter milker, so in that of colo- 
nist we have the picture of a ploughman behind 
his oxen turning up the soil for food. 

The first Roman colonies were made up of sol- 
diers who garrisoned the conquered or hostile terri- 
tory. When Italy became overcrowded, colonies 
were founded for the benefit of the poor of Rome. 
This was a sort of ancient and permanent " Fresh- 
air Fund." When the empire required large 



WHAT IS A COLONY? 1 7 

armies to occupy its vast domain, there were great 
numbers of veterans, for whom it must provide. 
These old soldiers were not pensioned in money, as 
in our modern history ; for Rome was rich in land 
rather than in cash. So it was after our Revolution- 
ary War, when the United States was very poor in 
coin, but very rich in territory. The old Continen- 
tals were paid not in gold and silver, but in land 
warrants. The American coloni helped largely in 
building up what was then called the Great West. 

The Roman colony was thus a foundation for the 
benefit of veteran soldiers who had served out their 
time in the army. These colonists retained their 
citizenship, while receiving their lands by lot. 
When the empire extended from Britain to Persia 
and from Germany to the African deserts, colonies 
were very numerous. They were of various grades, 
but every district settled was considered an inte- 
gral part of the empire. In some colonies settlers 
enjoyed all, but in others only a few privileges of 
Roman citizenship. Veterans usually settled on the 
soil allotted to them and married, and their children 
and descendants grew up, becoming citizens both of 
the particular state and of the empire. As a rule, 
the central government at Rome appointed their 
ablest men as colonial governors, but their tenure of 
office was limited, lest through personal influence 
they might grow too powerful. The chief feature 



1 8 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

of the Roman system, that of centraHzation, was 
carefully preserved in order to prevent colonies from 
becoming independent. 

This is the system, in an improved form, which 
the British government has so largely copied, espe- 
cially since the American Revolutionary War, which 
taught much wisdom. Many of the English gov- 
ernors sent to rule our fathers were weak, foolish, or 
unworthy men ; but now extreme care is taken in 
London to send the ablest men to Canada, India, 
South Africa, Australia, and other colonies. They 
are also moved about from country to country, so as 
to keep power centralized in England. The Irish-- 
man Sir Hercules Robinson, one of the best of 
Great Britain's colonial governors, of whose death 
in October, 1897, we read as we revise this chapter, 
governed well no fewer than six British colonies on 
four continents. Nevertheless, signs are not want- 
ing that the idea of federation, so splendidly demon- 
strated in American history, will yet become the 
rule, and the British United States take the place 
of the United Kingdom and her colonies. 

Grandly the Roman colonies fulfilled their mis- 
sion. To-day, after more than twelve hundred years 
from the fall of the Roman empire, we see that 
some of the richest associations of history are with 
colonies. When St. Paul sailed from the seaport of 
Troas in Asia to introduce Christian civilization in 



WHAT IS A COLONY? 1 9 

Europe, he preached the gospel first at Phihppi, 
which, as St. Luke, the historian of the Book of 
Acts, notes, was a colony,, or, as the Geneva version 
says, a place to which people went from Rome to 
live. The name of another Roman colony in 
Britain, on the Lind River, has descended to us in 
that of a city and also of Lincoln, one of the great- 
est of our presidents. In the geography of the 
Roman empire no name is more frequently found 
than that of Colonia, unless we except Augusta and 
Castra. Besides the term signifying that the place 
was a colony, there was some other name given 
from circumstances attending the settlement. Just 
as " castra," or camp, becomes changed into " caster " 
as in Lancaster, Caesarea into Jersey, Julius Caesar 
into Julich or Gulick, and Caesar Augustus into 
Saragossa, so the word " colonia " has suffered 
curious chancres, as we see in Enorlish " coin " and 
" colony " and in Cologne on the Rhine. 

hi the Roman as well as in the Greek colonial 
system, the idea of close connection with and de- 
pendence upon the mother country was always 
maintained. The governing corporation of each 
Roman colony was dependent upon that of Rome. 
The idea was that the colony was always to be a 
part of the nation and empire. 

This description separates the Roman or Greek 
colony entirely from that of a simple migration or 



20 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

wandering of a people from the old ancestral seats, 
into a new country or continent ; as, for example, 
when the Asiatic tribes that came to inhabit North 
America forgot their old homes. When the high- 
landers on the steppes of North Asia, known in 
history as Scythians, Huns, Turks, Tartars, or 
Mongols, in various ages invaded the southern 
countries, they also retained little or no connection 
with their ancestral lands. Indeed, uncivilized peo- 
ple, that is, people who have no writing, quickly 
forget their past. Whether it be the New England- 
ers who go down into the mountains of Kentucky, 
or the Normans who descend from Scandinavia into 
France, they forget their fathers. Illiteracy means 
darkness as to history. Life without letters is death. 
We do not, therefore, speak of the w^estward migra- 
tion of the Celts as far as Ireland, the advance of 
the Teutonic or of the Gothic nations into western 
or southern Europe, as movements of colonists; for 
they kept no remembrance of the land they left 
behind. 

During the middle ages, the Italians sent out 
bodies of men into various parts of the Mediterra- 
nean, who extended Venetian and Genoese trade 
and commerce in subject or neighbor lands. Vari- 
ous companies of Lombards, and other Italians, 
went also into northern Europe. They became 
the money-changers of the nations beyond the 



WHAT IS A COLONY? 21 

Alps, introducing financial customs and enterprises. 
Yet these can hardly be called true colonists. 

In modern times, we must award first honors of 
colonization to the Portuguese and Spaniards ; for 
the former had planted colonies, some a century 
old, in Brazil, Africa, and Asia, and the latter in 
South America, Mexico, and the West Indies, before 
the Englishmen obtained foothold on any continent 
beyond Europe. Yet, let us note at once how dif- 
ferent these were — the Spanish and Portuguese — 
from the English and Dutch methods and results. 
The two nations of the Iberian peninsula did, indeed, 
lead the modern European states in replenishing 
and subduing newly discovered continents, yet in 
neither case were these enterprises begun by a 
movement of the people. The King of Spain, con- 
sidering America as his private property, wished to 
establish one great empire in Europe, and another 
beyond the Atlantic, so that when united under his 
own crown, these should be grander in area and 
splendor than the old Roman empire itself. With 
this purpose in view, he sent out noblemen of high 
rank with princely salaries, who led their personal 
followers after them. So, also, did Portugal in 
Brazil and the East, and France in Canada and 
Louisiana. It was the old Roman way over again, 
without any improvement. The story of the early 
Spanish explorers in America has been already 



22 THE ROMANCE OE AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

told in our previous volume, entitled " The Romance 
of Discovery." 

In the case of the British and Dutch colonists, 
the spirit and method were entirely different. The 
people went first. The dignitaries followed after- 
ward. The colonies which now form the United 
States were, for the most part, the results of move- 
ments among the English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, 
Huguenot, Walloon, and German people, who were 
dissatisfied either with the kind of government 
under which they lived, or the religion which poli- 
ticians tried to force upon them. They were not 
contented, for the very good reason that their con- 
sciences had been enlightened. They could not 
live happily under the sort of church and state 
which then existed. They longed for more freedom. 
Coming to the new continent of America, they 
obtained what they sought. Some, indeed, — Dutch, 
Swedes, Swiss, English, — without any grievances at 
home, were moved by love of adventure or were 
tempted by hopes of wealth to be got in the fisher- 
ies, the fur trade, the supposed gold mines, by rear- 
ing silkworms, or in developing the wonderful re- 
sources of the new land. 

English colonization was begun by the English 
people. At first these pioneers who had crossed 
the sea were ignored or neglected by their govern- 
ment. Only when the colonies began to prosper 



IF// AT /S A COLONY? 23 

did royalty pay much attention to them. Becoming 
rich, they offered a tempting field for taxation and 
the filling of the British coffers. Then king and 
parliament joined in a scheme to tax the American 
colonists in the Roman way, which was something 
which men of Dutch and British descent would not 
stand. The ancient doctrine, first formulated by 
the Netherlanders and later by the English, was 
" No taxation without consent." They who pay 
the taxes must first vote them. 

It was not until after the Revolutionary War that 
the British government fully formulated a colonial 
policy like that of the ancient Roman empire, but 
with modern improvements added because of expe- 
rience with America. Such a policy, wisely carried 
out, has been best for both the colonists and abo- 
rigines. It often happens that the first discoverers, 
explorers, and settlers are little better than pirates 
and robbers, who take land as they please, caring 
nothing for the rights of inferior races already on 
the soil. The British colonists in Africa, Australia, 
New Zealand, India, and other parts of the world 
have found that all the land which they had con- 
quered, occupied, or bought in large quantities from 
the natives for guns, beads, wire, shovels, a looking- 
glass, or a piece of red cloth was not wholly their 
own. These have had to yield their claims to 
those of the British crown. Havino- learned wis- 



24 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

dom from her mistakes in dealing with the Ameri- 
can colonies, Great Britain has become the mother 
of many nations. 

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the first 
object of a patriotic Englishman or Dutchman was 
to humble Spain. The monarchy that then owned 
America was the dominating power threatening all 
Europe. The two small countries which crippled 
and impoverished Spain became the two most suc- 
cessful colonizers the modern world has seen. In 
American history, the term " colony " has come into 
our speech from the Dutch. In Virginia, the Caro- 
linas, and Massachusetts the settlements were all 
called " plantations," but in New Netherland " col- 
onies." 



CHAPTER II. 

THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRGIN QUEEN. 

OIR WALTER RALEIGH led the way in awak- 
^ ening the EngHsh mind to colonial enterprise and 
even in attempting himself to plant colonies in the 
region of Virginia. Although these first ventures 
failed, Raleigh will not be forgotten by Americans. 

Woman's aid helped mightily to make America. 
As Isabella first encouraged Columbus, so Queen 
Elizabeth favored Raleigh. In 1578 she granted 
the first charter for English colonization on the 
North American continent. The name, Virginia, 
which she gave, though now restricted to a single 
state, included all the land which on July 4, 1776, 
became the United States of America. In this first 
charter the number of the councillors was thirteen, 
— as many as the states which formed the Union. 
How often does Divine Providence smite human 
superstition, in making great events, rich in happi- 
ness for mankind, occur on Friday, and how often 
is the number thirteen honored ! 

Although the Cabots sailed and made landfall 
under the Tudors, yet these rulers were not destined 

25 



26 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

to plant the Germanic race or the Enghsh people 
in America. This honor was reserved for the worst 
dynasty that disgraced the throne of Great Britain. 
On the loth of April, 1606, King James Stuart put 
his signature to the patent which chartered two 
companies, the London and the Plymouth, bestow- 
ing on them in equal proportions the territory in 
America, including adjacent islands, lying between 
the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north 
latitude. For the first five years the people were to 
live together, holding common land, property, and 
food. 

China, gold, and spice were still the lure of colo- 
nists. To show how the minds of every one, king 
and people, were possessed with the ideas of finding 
a water-route to China and of getting gold out of 
the soil, it was stipulated that one-fifth of the pre- 
cious metal found should belong to the king. All 
waterways near the colony were to be explored, in 
order to find a short and easy way to the Pacific 
Ocean. Although the charter was published in 
England, the instructions of the king were put in a 
sealed box and with much mystery kept secret. 
They were not made public until the colonists 
reached Virginia. 

One may wonder why Englishmen could be 
tempted to leave home. Their little country had 
then only about four millions of people, most of 



THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRGIN QUEEN. 2 J 

whom lived in the southern tier of counties, from 
which a majority of the settlers came. 

In the year 1606, however, times were hard and 
food was dear. It was not dreamed then that 
England could ever support a population of nearly 
forty millions of souls, which is now done through 
improved agriculture and commerce. Furthermore, 
after Queen Elizabeth in 1585 took up the cause 
of the Dutch United States and sent an army 
to help the Netherlanders against Spain, there 
had been tens of thousands of English soldiers, 
with officers, contractors, and merchants, in the 
Low Countries, but now in 1606 the war between 
Holland and Spain was over. Already the peace 
negotiations, which were to result in a truce of 
eleven years, were under way. Thousands of Brit- 
ish soldiers were thus thrown out of employment. 
When paid off and discharged at home, they were 
idlers waiting for a job. Not only had the military 
business, with its contracts and trade, helped to 
make Enoland rich, but the one hundred thousand 
people, mostly skilled workmen or intelligent busi- 
ness men, driven out of the Belgic Netherlands by 
Alva, had introduced those manufactures which were 
to make England rich. There was temporary dis- 
tress, however, for the supply of breadstuffs had 
fallen short, because the landowners were turning 
their fields into sheep pastures, to raise wool in- 



28 THE ROMANCE OE AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

stead of wheat. On account of this great change 
in agriculture, from plough land to meadow, which 
left harrow and hoe rusty for want of use, a large 
army of farm laborers found themselves with nothing 
to do. 

So all eyes were turned to America as a conti- 
nent where work was not only plenty, but gold was 
abundant. The common notion, as shown in the 
popular plays of the time in the theatre and in the 
books, was that the American rivers " ran down 
their golden sands," that nuggets were as plentiful 
as marbles and the yellow metal more common than 
red copper in England, Furthermore, lively young 
men believed that among the " diggings," there 
was " no more law than conscience and not too 
much of either." 

In our time, Klondike explains to us the eager- 
ness of these seventeenth-century Englishmen to 
try their fortunes in the American wilderness. 
Even the gold-hunting Spaniards, though they 
chased phantoms, seem, after all, not so very differ- 
ent from the men of to-day, who, in the hope of 
wealth or for love of adventure or " the danger's 
self to lure alone," will hazard health and life even 
in icy regions. 

With so many men out of work and popula- 
tion pressing upon the food-supply, Virginia seemed 
" the door which God had opened to England." 



THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRGIN QUEEN. 29 

The London Company had no trouble in getting 
young men to go out as " planters," and in this 
enterprise of 1606 there were neither wives nor 
children. It was a company of bachelors, like a 
military battalion. Of the one hundred and five 
colonists, more than half called themselves " gentle- 
men" ; that is, men without any manual trade or 
skilled employment, younger sons who had not in- 
herited property and who were not accustomed to 
handle tools or do the downright hard work neces- 
sary, in all first attempts, to make the soil produce 
food. The others were laborers, tradesmen, and 
mechanics, with two surgeons and a chaplain. 

On the 19th of December, 1606, three ships 
moored at Blackwall, London, where are now the 
East India docks, took on their human cargo. The 
largest ship was the Susan Constant of one hun- 
dred tons, Captain Christopher Newport, commander 
and fleet-captain ; the God-speed of forty tons. Cap- 
tain Bartholomew Gosnold, commander; and the 
Discovery of twenty tons. Captain John Ratcliffe. 
The total tonnage of these three little ships w^as less 
than that of the Mayflower of later days and of 
many a canal boat of to-day. There were thirty- 
nine men in the crews and one hundred and five 
colonists, of whom seventy-one were in the first, 
fifty-two in the second, and twenty in the third ship 
— one hundred and forty-four in all. Farewells and 



30 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

salutes being over, tlie little squadron sailed down 
the Thames, but when in the English Channel 
contrary winds detained them until New Year's 
Day. Then they moved westward across the At- 
lantic along the old route to the West Indies and 
up the coast into Chesapeake Bay. After a nearly 
four months' voyage, with their new home in sight, 
they opened the box of royal instructions, finding 
that the councillors named were Wingfield, Gosnold, 
Smith, Newport, Ratcliffe, Martin, and Kendell. 
The first three of these, and probably others, had 
seen military service in the armies of the Dutch 
republic. 

Three days afterwards they landed and planted a 
cross, naming the place, after the Prince of Wales, 
Cape Henry, The other cape at the mouth of 
Chesapeake Bay, they called Cape Charles, after 
the future king of that name. Anchoring the next 
day, they gratefully named the place Point Comfort. 
They sailed up the river, in the beautiful time of 
flowers, landing in May upon a peninsula. The 
name of their king was given to the river and to the 
town which they founded. 

Knowing that they were surrounded by natives 
who mio^ht be hostile and rememberinor how Ra- 
leigh's colony had perished, they at once began 
building a fort and laying out James City. Captain 
John Smith, then twenty-eight years of age and a 



THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRGIN QUEEN. 3 1 

man of splendid abilities, showed himself at once a 
leader. China was in fancy still near. Smith and 
Newport, with twenty-three men, took the small boat 
and started on a tour of exploration up the river, 
going beyond the site of Richmond. Among other 
wonderful things seen, was a boy, ten years old, with 
yellow hair and light skin, who may have been a 
descendant of one of the Roanoke settlers. Indian 
tradition declared that several of the survivors had 
been adopted into the tribes. In later days a small 
band of gray-eyed savages were found on the North 
Carolina coast, who claimed that their ancestors 
were white men. 

Smith's exploring party returned on the 27th of 
May, and found that the natives had attacked the 
settlers, but had been driven off by Wingfield, who 
had more than once shown his valor in the Nether- 
lands. Two men had been killed and ten wounded, 
When, on the 15th of June, the fort was finished, 
the chaplain, Rev. Robert Hunt, held what was 
perhaps the first public worship in English held in 
America, and administered the communion. On 
the next day, Monday, Captain Newport sailed 
homeward in the largest ship, Susan Constant, 
which was loaded with timber and mineral speci- 
mens, some, no doubt, expected to contain precious 
metal. 

Provisions had been left for three months, but 



32 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

life in the colony was not very happy. Disap- 
pointed in not finding gold, unused to the hard 
work which was necessary, surrounded by hostile 
savages, and divided among themselves, their many 
troubles were further increased by the malarious 
climate of the region in which they had made their 
settlement. 

Fever was epidemic. Quinine, not discovered 
by the Jesuit missionaries of Peru until 1638, was 
unknown either as medicine, stimulant, or groceries. 
When autumn began, nearly one-half of the colo- 
nists had died, and many of the remainder were ill. 
Hardly more than a score of able-bodied men at- 
tended the sick and kept guard. 

With cool weather there was improvement, espe- 
cially since they were now able to dwell in log houses. 
They also built a church, and the energetic Captain 
John Smith obtained supplies of grain from the 
Indians. He was captured by the savages, but was 
released after a few weeks' imprisonment on promis- 
ing to give the Indians two great guns and a grind- 
stone. Reaching Jamestown, he found only forty 
men living. 

Captain Newport returned from England early in 
January with more settlers, but within a week after- 
ward the fort and several of the houses were 
destroyed by fire. On a visit to Powhatan, the 
Indian chief, Captains Newport and Smith obtained 



THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRGIN QUEEN. 33 

supplies of food and exchanged pledges of mutual 
friendship. An Indian lad was taken to England, 
while the English boy Thomas Savage stayed with 
Powhatan and became very useful afterwards as an 
interpreter. The ship, loaded with iron ore, sassa- 
fras, cedar posts, and walnut boards, sailed homeward 
on the loth of April. 

Meanwhile the colonists began to rebuild James 
City. They cast their seed into the ground, hoping 
for generous crops, but while waiting for the corn 
to grow, what with fever and insufificient food, about 
half their number died. To the great joy of the 
survivors, the Pkcenix arrived with fresh provisions 
and seventy settlers. Sailing again on June 22, she 
took back a cargo of cedar wood. 

Smith now began in earnest the work of explo- 
ration. He went up the Chesapeake Bay and into 
its tributaries. He opened trade with the natives, 
and on a second expedition, toward the end of July, 
he reached the head of the bay. Here he was 
entertained by a party of Iroquois warriors, whose 
great forest republic of five federated nations ex- 
tended from the Hudson River to Niagara Falls. 
The map drawn by Captain John Smith has been 
the basis of nearly all others made since. It was 
even used as an authority in 1873, in settling the 
boundary dispute between the states of Virginia 
and Maryland. When elected president of the 



34 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

council, Smith brought order and discipHne into 
the settlement. 

Another reinforcement of seventy colonists ar- 
rived, among whom were Francis West, the brother 
of Lord Delaware ; a lady, Mrs. Thomas Forest, and 
her maid, Ann Burras. Before the end of the year 
Ann was married to John Laydon, and the first 
wedding in Virginia was celebrated. 

Better far than a batch of the average immi- 
grants, was the reinforcement of some German and 
Polish mechanics, brought over to manufacture 
glass. These Germans were the first of a great 
company that have contributed powerfully to build 
up the industry and commerce of Virginia, — "the 
.mother of states and statesmen." There still stands 
on the east side of Timber Neck Bay, on the north 
side of the York River, a stone chimney, with a 
mighty fireplace nearly eight feet wide, built by 
these Germans. 

The directors of the London Company were ex- 
cessively greedy for gold. When Captain New- 
port left England again, they required of him a 
pledge to fulfil at least two of four conditions. He 
was not to return without a nugget of gold, the 
news of the discovery of a passage to China, one 
of the settlers of the lost company of Sir Walter 
Raleigh, or freight in his vessel equal in value to 
the cost of the expedition, which was two thousand 



THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRGIN QUEEN. 35 

pounds sterling. If he failed in all of these condi- 
tions, then the Jamestown colonists were to be left 
to shift for themselves. Perhaps Lord Bacon had 
these men in his eye, when he wrote in 1625 : "The 
principal thing that hath been the destruction of 
most plantations hath been the base and hasty- 
drawing of profit in the first years." 

The captain tried hard to redeem his promise. 
Having brought costly presents to Powhatan, he 
wasted much time in the ceremony of coronation, 
and strained every nerve to get a valuable cargo. 
At that time there was great demand in England 
for naval stores, but all that could be done was to 
load the ship with some pitch tar, glass, and iron 
ore. When smelted, the metal yielded twenty dol- 
lars a ton, or, in our values, about eighty dollars. 

Although two hundred colonists were in James- 
town, yet almost the only man of vigor was Smith, 
who soon became the head of the government. He 
cheered the industrious, and the lazy soon found 
that they must work or starve. Colonial matters 
improved under his discipline, but for some reason, 
now unknown, he had to return to England. He 
never again visited the colony. 

Everything seemed to go to pieces after Smith 
left. Starvation and disease carried off all but 
about threescore men. Some of these went to live 
among the Indians, while another party began a 



36 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

settlement some miles from the fort. When a new 
ship with reinforcements came in, the entire com- 
pany, old and new, resolved to return to England. 
They were actually on the ships, with their faces 
set homewards, when they were met by a fleet of 
nine vessels from England, containing nearly five 
hundred colonists including a considerable number 
of old veterans who had fouQ^ht in the Dutch re- 
public. Once more all rallied to the work of build- 
ing up a new state. Perseverance conquered. 



CHAPTER III. 

TOBACCO, BRIDES, AND BLACK SERVANTS. 

THE London Company, in the hope of improv- 
ing Virginian affairs, had appHed for a new 
charter of privileges, which greatly increased the 
area of the colony. This was granted on the 
23d of May, 1609, and the expedition of nine ves- 
sels, as we have seen, sailed from Plymouth on the 
ist of June. 

The discipline now put in force in the settlement 
was borrowed from that of the model army organ- 
ized by Prince Maurice in the Dutch republic, and 
Sir Thomas Dale, the new governor, made it work 
admirably. The land was divided, and no more 
rations were given out from the .public storehouse. 
The church edifice was repaired and the fortifica- 
tions were improved. A new settlement was planned 
on Varina Neck at the bend in the James River, 
called Farrar's Island. The isthmus of this penin- 
sula was called "Dutch Gap," after the glass-makers 
who set up their furnaces here in 1608. Most 
Englishmen then made, and uneducated people now 
make, no distinction between the Dutch and the 

37 



38 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Germans, who are politically different people, each 
with a laneuaee of its own. Over two hundred 
years later, this site was made famous by a canal 
dug under General Butler's orders and finished by 
the United States government in 1873. 

A new spirit now animated the colony. Men 
worked cheerfully and gladly. Gardens for hemp, 
flax, and other seeds were laid out. Under the 
new code of Dutch laws, " divine, moral, and mar- 
tial," order and prosperity ruled where disorder 
and shiftlessness had been. Soon the colony could 
be called, after a word beloved by Americans, a 
success. 

By June, 161 1, when Sir Thomas Gates arrived, 
there were seven hundred settlers, among whom 
were women and children, with plenty of provi- 
sions besides one hundred cows and other cattle. 
Gates sent Dale in September to found the town 
of Henrico, and in December another called Ber- 
muda. This town of " Bermuda Hundred" shows 
how the old Germanic division of the people into 
hundreds was early introduced into English Amer- 
ica. The old home of the Pilgrim Fathers was in 
the " Basset-Law Hundred " of Nottingham. The 
"hundred" still serves in some states as a voting 
district. 

The debt of our English fathers to the Indian 
is very great, and to the negro even greater. Both 




JOHN ROLFE MARRIED POCAHONTAS, THE DAUGHTER OF POWHATAN." 



TOBACCO, BRIDES, AND BLACK SERVANTS. 39 

aided the white man to make America. The 
Indians, as we shall see, taught the northern colo- 
nists culture of corn, woodcraft, natural resources 
of food, use of the moccasin, snowshoe, birch- 
bark canoe, wampum, and the virtues of tobacco. 
Where the Indian gave the results of experience, 
the negro gave his toil. The year 1612 was made 
famous in Virginia by the systematic culture of 
this native American plant, discovered by the red 
and cultivated by the black man. 

John Rolfe was the man who first demonstrated 
the value of the weed and opened a boundless 
field for slave labor. He also married Pocahontas, 
the daughter of Powhatan, and thus gained the 
friendship of the Indians. The couple were mar- 
ried on the 5th of April, 1614, by Rev. Alexander 
Whitaker. This brought to the colony the good 
will of the powerful Indian chief, and soon after 
a treaty was made with the Chickahominy tribe. 

These events practically decided the future of 
the colony and made its future sure. John Rolfe, 
Pocahontas, and tobacco represent those three 
elements, — intelligent industry, friendship with 
neighbors, and a sure income by which permanent 
success was won. By the steady export of tobacco, 
commerce was opened with Europe ; for Virginia 
had a commodity always in demand to pay for 
needed supplies. Through Pocahontas, all present 



40 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

danger from the Indians was removed. Tobacco 
also furnished a substitute for money and encour- 
aged the colonists to clear the land and begin 
agriculture, while it attracted new colonists from 
Europe. In the true sense of the word, the lead- 
ing men were " planters," and the common English 
word for a colony was " plantation," as Lord 
Bacon's essay, written in 1625, shows. Wisely he 
wrote : " Planting of countries is like planting of 
woods ; for you must make account to lose almost 
twenty years' profit, and expect your recompense in 
the end." 

The culture of tobacco also influenced Virginia's 
future history. It made a demand for labor which 
was unfortunately satisfied by the importation of 
slaves. It scattered population by preventing its 
concentration in towns, and thus hindered that 
close union of the people which, in the Eastern 
and the Middle colonies, so powerfully promoted 
education and moulded the character of the people. 
It was impossible to have in Virginia the system of 
schools, with the newspaper and the printing press, 
as in Pennsylvania, or town communities as in Mas- 
sachusetts, for example. Only a few towns were 
founded. The population, scattered over a large 
territory, was composed of rich owners of planta- 
tions who, as the soil was c|uickly exhausted by 
tobacco under slave labor, added land to land and 



TOBACCO, BRIDES, AND BLACK SERVANTS. 4 1 

pushed farther and farther apart from each other ; 
while at the same time those who owned no land 
were forced into a low social condition and became 
" poor white trash," — now in freedom's day so no 
longer. Tobacco took the place of money. The 
ofificers of the government and the ministers of 
religion were paid and subscriptions made in this 
commodity. To help build a house of worship in 
Alexandria, Washington subscribed, as I have seen 
on the church books, instead of pounds sterling, a 
certain number of pounds of tobacco. 

Pocahontas visited England with her husband, 
but died there in 1617, leaving a son from whom 
three of the first families of Virginia trace their 
descent. Captain John Smith told many wonder- 
ful and romantic stories, mostly about ladies whom 
he had met and who had favored him ; but it was 
not until Pocahontas reached Eno^land that he let 
any one know of her rescue of him in 1607 from 
the war-club of Powhatan. 

The year 1619 was also a notable one on account 
of the beginning of three great institutions in the 
colony, — representative government, homes, and 
slavery. Sir George Yeardley arrived on the 19th 
of April, and the eleven towns or boroughs — for 
there were no counties yet — sent representatives 
who met in the chancel of the church buildine at 
Jamestown on July 30. This was the first popu- 



42 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

lar legislature on the continent of America. At 
this period only two European states gave the peo- 
ple a share in government. They were Great 
Britain and the Dutch republic. 

Men make a camp, but women a home. White 
women in the colony, thus far, had been curiosities. 
Hundreds of bachelors were eager for brides and 
they stood waiting on the wharf, with their cured 
tobacco already in their hands, when a ship con- 
taining ninety young women hove in sight. The 
maidens were quickly selected and made wives. 
Their passage was paid for by the tobacco. There 
was more marrying within those twenty-four hours 
than during any one week after the year 1619. It 
was a red-letter day for the parson. These new 
daughters of Virginia seemed to like the country 
and their husbands so well, that they wrote home 
persuading more rosy-cheeked English girls to come 
over and to help settle the new country. Promis- 
ing damsels were not the only white persons to 
arrive this year, for the company sent over in 
16 1 9 numbered nearly twelve hundred new settlers. 
Among them were boys and girls picked up in the 
streets of London. These were bound out as ap- 
prentices of the planters until they should reach 
their majority. There were also two hundred dis- 
orderly persons or convicts transported to be em- 
ployed as servants, and thus given a new chance of 
improvement. 



TOBACCO, BRIDES, AND BLACK SERVANTS. 43 

Toward the end of summer of the same year, the 
sons of Africa appeared as makers of America. 
There was not much romance in the method of 
their coming. Yet they had before them, or soon 
learned of, the example of Joseph sold as a slave by 
his brethren. Indeed, the black man in America 
soon appreciated the pathos and meaning of many 
things in the Bible, such as the year of jubilee, for 
which their white owners cared little. A ship ar- 
rived in want of provisions and traded off twenty 
African slaves for food. The wickedness of traffic 
in human bodies had not yet been seen clearly by 
Christian people. From all the nations of maritime 
or western Europe, probably without exception, 
went forth slave-catchers or slave-traders. 
^ Not many black bondsmen came during the first 
part of the seventeenth century, but in time the sys- 
tem of slavery spread over all the thirteen colonies. 
These negroes were not the first brought to the 
new continent, for there were already thousands in 
the West Indies laboring for the Spaniards. The 
black man Estevanico had already been v/ith the 
explorers in Texas and New Mexico. Yet from 
these first negro bondsmen and those who were im- 
ported until 1808, usually called in the South "ser- 
vants" and "slaves" in the North, the eight millions 
of our black fellow-citizens in the United States 
are descended. 



44 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Now that it is all over among us, let us see what 
slavery is. In its origin, slavery is the sign of civ- 
ilization. In the early wars of the human race, 
captives were murdered. As men became more 
civilized, instead of killing their captured enemies, 
they made them work. The change from massacre 
to slavery arose probably less from the idea of 
mercy than of commercial benefit ; for as men be- 
came less mere fighters, more skilful and produc- 
tive, they saw the advantage of making bondmen 
work for them. In the early ages slavery was a 
benefit to savages, who are naturally lazy. Com- 
pelled to toil, their work became an element of 
progress. Slavery existed among all races that 
have records, but the Hebrews had laws which 
mitigated the rigors of bondage ; for their slaves be- 
came free at the end of seven years, and in the year 
of jubilee all slaves were emancipated. No ancient 
book can compare with the Old Testament in the 
amount and spirit of its language about labor and 
wages, freedom and slavery. The preamble to the 
Ten Commandments is the record of a Divine 
Emancipation Proclamation. Jehovah is the De- 
liverer. The whole burden of the Old and New 
Testaments is that of deliverance and release. 
John Browns Bible in Charlestown, which I have 
looked at, and which he marked during many years 
of study, is powerfully impressive on this theme. 



TOBACCO, BRIDES, A.\'D BLACK SERl'AiVTS. 45 

Under the Roman empire, which was a great 
school of civih'zation to our barbaric ancestors, the 
coloni or colonists on the landed estates were 
adscripti gleba", or enrolled with the soil on which 
they lived. They were personally free, but could 
not of their own will leave the lands which they 
tilled. They were like the inaka of Old Japan. 
In the course of time the actual slaves who had 
been prisoners of war, or seized to be made bond- 
men, approached the condition of the coloni. When 
our Germanic ancestors came into contact with the 
Roman civilization, their own system was gradually 
modified, so that instead of slavery came the serf- 
dom of the middle ages. While the feudal system 
lasted, the condition of most people in Europe was 
that of serfs, and this social system was not broken 
up until after the Crusades. These helped power- 
fully to begin the work of freedom which commerce 
and industry, under Christian forms, completed; so 
that in modern times the European people have 
been free. One late exception was in Russia, where 
fifty millions of people were little more than beasts 
of burden, until their emancipation by the Czar 
Alexander II. in 1861. Then Russian serfs were 
given the opportunity to become thinking and 
reasoning men. 

So we see that the effect of chanorino- two classes 
of men, the coloni and the slaves, was to lower the 



46 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

position of the old colonus while it raised that of the 
agricultural laborer as a whole, thus preparing for 
modern society through the successive steps of serf- 
dom, feudalism, the Crusades, modern commerce 
and industry, constitutional governments and re- 
publics, where all are perfectly free. 

Although the Germanic tribes, including the 
Anglo-Saxons, held their captives and conquered 
men in bondage, yet the word " slave " did not come 
into the English language until very late. Though 
common in Shakespeare, it is hardly known in the 
English Bible, occurring only twice. The term did 
not arise in Europe until about the ninth century, 
when Slavic men or persons of the Slavonian race 
were captured by our Germanic ancestors. Then 
the national appellation of " Slaves " was degraded, 
by chance or malice, from its original signification 
of " glory " into that of servitude. The Russian 
word slava^ which in our language has come to 
mean a slave, with all its associations of contempt 
and woe, means renown or fame. Thus, what is 
one man's meat is another man's poison. In Asia 
the same word which in the language on one side 
of the mountains may mean a god, on the other may 
mean a devil. One civilization, the Christian, when 
perfected over all the world, will change all this. 

In Old Virginia a planter or house-master always 
spoke of his negroes as "servants," just as did the 



TOBACCO, BRIDES, AND BLACK SERVANTS. 47 

Bible. The Constitution of the United States 
speaks of "persons held to service or labor," but 
not of " slaves." It is a potent element in moral 
progress, when things are called by their right 
names and the noble word " servant " is cleansed 
and reserved for men free in body as well as soul. 
Despite the evils of slavery, it was under this 
system that the Southern people did a noble work 
in educating the negro out of African savagery and 
paganism into the rudiments of Christianity and 
civilization. 



CHAPTER IV. 

LIVELY POLITICS IN THE OLD DOMINION. 

TN JUI3A, 1620, when the Pilgrims in Leyden were 
■^ getting ready to sail westward, there were four 
thousand persons in Virginia, and during the year 
forty thousand pounds of tobacco were shipped to 
England and Holland. More women came over as 
brides. A windmill was built. Iron works were 
established and schools started. Translations of 
Ovid and Virgil were made by George Sandys and 
published in 1626. This scholar was treasurer of 
the colony and brother of that Sir Edwin Sandys, 
the friend of the Pilgrims and a lover of liberty, who 
was active in securing a new constitution for the 
colony, which confirmed and enlarged the powers of 
government by the people. This famous ordinance 
furnished the model of every subsequent provincial 
form of government in the Anglo-American colonies. 
Twenty-one vessels came over during the year 
162 1, bringing thirteen hundred men, women, and 
children. Though most of the immigrants were 
English people, yet among them were Scottish, 
Welsh, Irish, Dutch, Germans, and Poles, and these 



LIVELY POLITICS IN THE OLD DOMINION. 49 

were followed later by people of other nationalities. 
The Virginians, like New Yorkers, Yankees, and 
Western people, are of varied ancestry, though domi- 
nated, just as our whole country is, by English ideas, 
traditions, and language; for the best " English " ideas 
are an inheritance from the whole Teutonic race. 

The phrase " Old Virginia " now came into use, 
because the Plymouth men made a New Virginia 
in the North, and later the popular term was " the 
Old Dominion," an honor which Canada both oflfi- 
cially and familiarly, though without the adjective, 
still enjoys. 

The subsequent history of this noble colony was 
influenced by the fortunes and misfortunes of the 
English people. Their internal experiences were 
much like those of other builders of commonwealths 
along the Atlantic coast. They suffered from Ind- 
ian wars and from a variety of troubles, climatic, 
social, economic, and political, both within and with- 
out, but the steadiness and great value of the 
tobacco crop, its easy cultivation and quick returns, 
made wealth of rapid growth. This single plant, 
one of the many gifts of the red man to American 
civilization, gave to Virginia the possibility of being 
the largest and richest of the thirteen colonies. In 
the Revolution, Virginia led all in population, hav- 
ing nearly eight hundred thousand inhabitants. 

The early representative government was partially 



50 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

suppressed by the king, who, in 1624, took away 
the company's charter and made Virginia a royal 
province. Sir WilHam Berkeley, the governor in 
1642, did not believe in any education for the 
common people, and was an almost fanatical adher- 
ent to the political church of England. Nevertheless, 
the Assembly was continued and the people made 
most of their own laws. When King Charles I. 
lost his head and Cromwell and the Commonwealth 
arose, many of the Cavaliers left England and emi- 
grated to Virginia. Not a few of these were men 
of character, influence, and ability, who became 
founders of illustrious families of Virginia and 
ancestors of leadinor American statesmen. 

o 

When the Commonwealth was set up, the Vir- 
ginians gave allegiance to the Protector, and in the 
name of this government North Carolina was ex- 
plored and taken possession of. Under Cromwell's 
rule the Virginia people were very prosperous, but 
as soon as Charles II. was on the throne again Sir 
William Berkeley became governor once more. 
Representative government was suppressed in 
Virginia, and the royal governor and men of his 
mind kept out every sort of religion except that of 
which the king approved. Yet although the 
Virginians had made a great present of nearly fifty 
thousand pounds of tobacco to the new king, and 
even celebrated the date of his restoration. May 29, 



LIVELY POLITICS IN THE OLD DOMINION. 5 I 

as a holy day, they found that the second Charles 
Stuart was quite ready to destroy the colony if it 
were his whim to do so. 

Parliament had enacted certain navigation laws, 
in the nature of a protective tariff, which were 
aimed at the Dutch, then the common carriers of 
Europe's trade by water. The idea was to ruin the 
commerce of the republic as far as possible, and 
thus get the control of the seas. Everything brought 
to Great Britain or sent from the colonies, or any 
foreign goods purchased, must be carried in English 
vessels. In spite of the protest of the governor and 
planters of Virginia, King Charles enforced these 
laws and even made them more strinorent. The 
tobacco trade, then amounting to about sixty 
million dollars a year, was thus nearly ruined ; for 
the planters could get only the price which English 
merchants chose to give and were compelled to buy 
woven stuffs, manufactures, and sugar at whatever 
cost was fixed in London. Still worse, the un- 
scrupulous and perfidious king gave away nearly 
the whole of Virginia to two of his court favorites, 
so that the planters were not only without title to 
their lands, but had no votes or representation. The 
state of affairs, aggravated by the hostile Indians, 
became so distressful that the troubles culminated 
in what is known as " Bacon's Rebellion," and civil 
war broke out. 



52 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., who had been but a short 
time in the colony, was a young lawyer, rich, elo- 
quent, popular, and brave. The people rallied 
round him, electing a new assembly and making 
Bacon one of their representatives. The reform 
measures were called " Bacon's laws." Governor 
Berkeley resisted, dissolved the council, addressed 
the king, and proclaimed Bacon a traitor. Bacon 
marched on Jamestown to the governor's quarters. 
It is said that he imitated the trick played at the 
siege of Maastricht by the Spanish soldiers, who 
bucklered female captives in front of them when 
they attacked the city. Seizing some of the wives 
of Berkeley's friends. Bacon placed them in front of 
his troops, so that the governor's forces would not 
fire upon the besiegers, and Berkeley evacuated the 
city. With the " white-apron brigade," Bacon won 
the victory, and in the morning his forces burned 
Jamestown to the ground. 

Henceforth this site of the first permanent Eng- 
lish settlement in America was given up to weeds 
and wild animals. In 1867, when I visited the 
ruins, the chief feature seemed to be a chimney, 
some crumbling walls, and fragments of buildings, 
but little else to suggest the past. The peninsula 
has become an island, and under the restoring care 
of the Virginia chapter of the Daughters of the 
Revolution, Jamestown has been made a clean and 



LIVELY POLITICS IN THE OLD DOMINION. 53 

pleasant place for the rambles of the tourist and 
historical student. 

Bacon soon died from disease brought on by ex- 
posure. His followers were scattered and twenty- 
three of them put to death. Berkeley proved himself 
a butcher, but Bacon the statesman was not for- 
gotten ; for many of his laws, though repealed, 
were reenacted, and Berkeley was recalled by the 
king. After this, Lord Culpepper was made gov- 
ernor for life and an era of great prosperity began, 
in which the habits of the planters were marked by 
personal indulgence and ostentatious expenditure. 
Virginia hospitality became a proverb. 

Though convicts and persons of disreputable 
character had come into the colony, they were in 
the minority, and the dangers from this class of 
people were guarded against by severe laws. The 
worst met their natural fate in punishment, while 
the better became prosperous and made good citi- 
zens ; so that in time a society distinguished for its 
refinement, executive ability, and generous hospi- 
tality grew up in the " ancient dominion." The 
Cavalier theory of life is not that of the Puritan. 
The latter excels in self-reliance, endurance, cour- 
age, and perseverance ; the latter in love, charity, 
gratitude, and friendship. The Puritan cared little 
for the graces and decorations of life, but the Cava- 
lier cultivated these with care. There were virtues 



54 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

and vices among each, and neither lived up fully to 
his ideals. A description of one by the other was 
usually a caricature. In the old country these two 
sorts of men were not able to live peaceably to- 
gether, until after their civil war and the folly of the 
Stuart kings. It seems to have been only through 
God's mercy that they were not consumed one of 
the other in America. Happily, between Puritan 
New England and Cavalier Virginia, Divine Provi- 
dence placed the tolerant Dutchmen and Quakers. 
Though always strongly royalist in sentiment, 
Virginia was later powerfully modified in spirit and 
procedure by a tremendous infusion of Scottish, 
Irish, German, and Swiss elements. These brought 
in more democratic ideas, preferring a form of life 
less infected with the semi-feudal and state-church 
notions of the great planters, which had been im- 
ported from Europe. One hundred years after 
Bacon's laws had been first enacted, the resolution 
in the Continental Congress to declare the colonies 
free and independent states came from Virginia. 
The decided difference between aristocracy and 
democracy, the eastern and the western portions, 
tide-water and mountainous Virginia, led in 1861 
to the creation of the new state of West Virginia. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE WALLOONS IN NEW NETHERLAND. 

WE must now look to that little country on the 
east side of the North Sea which, after Eng- 
land, has had more to do with the making of our 
nation and the shaping of American political history 
than any other. 

Holland and Friesland formed part of the ancient 
home of the nations that helped to form the very 
much mixed English people. Here in ancient 
times dwelt the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and other 
tribes who crossed over into Great Britain. Later 
from the Netherlands came most of the skilled 
artisans, inventors, and financiers, who changed 
England from an agricultural and wool-raising 
country to one leading the world in commerce and 
manufactures. It was the federal union of the 
seven states of the Dutch republic, with their 
written constitution and history much like our own, 
that, even more than England, gave the United 
States of America their political precedents. In- 
stead of there being a single state made up of many 

55 



56 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

countries, and governed by a king, like England, 
there were many states, each one having its own 
government, laws, and customs, though the people 
all spoke one language. These Dutch states, at first 
separate, united together, and in July, 1581, de- 
clared themselves independent, for much the same 
reasons as those which impelled the American colo- 
nies to imitate their example. 

The Dutch believed in " no taxation without 
consent," and in worshipping God as it suited them, 
without any dictation from kings or nobles, or 
church lords. They were perfectly willing to pay 
for good government, and cheerfully bore the heavi- 
est taxes during their eighty years' war for freedom 
from Spain, but they believed that those who were 
to pay the taxes ought first to vote them. Kings, 
they thought, were servants, not masters. Their flag 
was red, white, and blue, one ^tripe for each of the 
states. Their Congress consisted of a house of dep- 
uties, in which the nobles artd the cities were repre- 
sented, and each state had one vote. This body, 
which represented the states in particular, was called 
a States-General. As in the case of the United 
States Senate, which was so largely modelled on the 
Dutch original, the members were changed every 
two years. The national capital. The Hague, like 
the District of Columbia which is copied from it, 
had no vote. 



THE WALLOONS IN NEW NETHERLAND. 57 

Their long war of eighty years for independence, 
begun in 1568 by the invasion of the Spanish army 
under the Duke of Alva, was the training school of 
all the English soldiers who were the military 
directors of the colonies in America. The list is 
a very long one. It includes Sir Walter Raleigh, 
Captain John Smith, Argall, and Wingfield of Vir- 
ginia ; Myles Standish, Governor Dudley, and 
others of Massachusetts ; Lyon Gardiner and John 
Mason of Connecticut; Peter Stuyvesant and Jacob 
Leisler of New York; many noted Indian fighters 
and colonial heroes, besides several hundreds, pos- 
sibly thousands, of men who as veteran private 
soldiers or non-commissioned officers emigrated to 
the various colonies. The Dutch model republican 
army, under the stadholder Maurice, was the won- 
der of Europe. The rules which governed it, when 
adopted by Governor Dale in Virginia, made colo- 
nization there a success. The Dutch United States 
set the example of religious tolerance to the Ameri- 
can republic. Holland was the shelter land for the 
persecuted Jews, the Huguenots, the Walloons or 
French-speaking Netherlanders, and the oppressed 
of every land. This was long before the " Pilgrim 
Fathers " arrived in Leyden. There was no abso- 
lute liberty anywhere in Europe in the early seven- 
teenth century, but there was more freedom in the 
Dutch republic than anywhere else. Besides the 



58 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

city charters and written constitutions, the press was 
free, as it was not in England. 

There were Dutch free schools, sustained by 
public taxation, democratic rule in the church, and 
popular power in the state. Here we must look to 
find the origin of many things which are distinc- 
tively American, besides of much of what is best in 
all the English-speaking countries. Here, not only 
the first English Bibles, but most of the books and 
tracts of the free churchmen, were printed. These 
writings in the interests of religion divorced from 
politics, and of a church with which politicians could 
not meddle, helped powerfully to bring about the 
Commonwealth, the popular British Parliament, and 
the modern free churches in countries where the 
speech is English. In a word, the Dutch republic 
was just the kind of a country well fitted to send 
out successful colonists and to plant the seed of new 
states. It has been of the greatest blessing to our 
country that the founders of Massachusetts, Con- 
necticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and 
possibly those of other states received a good part 
of their education in the Dutch republic. 

After Henry Hudson's discovery of the coast-line 
of what is now the Middle states and his entrance 
and exploration of the great river from Sandy Hook 
to beyond the mouth of the Mohawk, there was a 
great desire among the Dutch merchants to traffic 



THE WALLOONS IN NEW NETHERLAND. 59 

with the Indians in New Netherland. Parties of 
fur-traders sailed up the river called Mauritius, 
named after Maurice, the Dutch stadtholder and 
commander of the Union armies. In one family of 
refugees from Valenciennes, in 1614, Jean Vigne, 
the first white child of New Netherland, was born. 
Yet there was no permanent settlement ; for during 
the Truce or Peace, from 1609 to 1621, no colonies 
could be planted. Even when opportunity offered, 
there was no special need or desire of colonization ; 
for Holland and the other six states of the Union 
were very prosperous. Everybody had employment, 
there was plenty of business, and there seemed no 
reason why emigrants should leave the mother 
country. The Dutch were not Pilgrims or " Dis- 
senters," nor were they dissatisfied with their gov- 
ernment or the state church. Their freedom had 
been practically won and their faith was established. 
Nevertheless, in anticipation of the end of the 
Truce in 1621, the directors of the Netherland 
Trading Company prepared to aid any volunteers 
who would settle the new Dutch province. These 
were not lacking; for there were Walloon before 
there were English " Pilgrim Fathers." When the 
Spanish Duke of Alva in 1567 invaded that part of 
Netherlands which is now Belgium, tens of thou- 
sands of Walloons, or French-speaking people of 
the Reformed Church, fled for refuge into Holland. 



6o THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Many of them lived in the same city of Leyden 
where long afterwards the future founders of Massa- 
chusetts found a home. With the Walloons, or 
Belgian Protestants, were many Huguenots. One 
of these, Jesse de Forest, as early as 1617 came 
from Hainault. He proposed to go out under any 
protection he could get and settle the new country 
discovered by Hudson, from which the fur-traders 
were sending home so many wonderful things, but 
the Dutch government could not then aid them. 

Meanwhile in 161 9, Rev. John Robinson, pastor 
of the Pilgrims, who formed one of the two British 
congregations in Leyden, made application to go to 
New Netherland. The directors of the company 
were pleased with the idea ; for these English folks 
had a first-rate reputation. They offered to give 
Robinson's people free passage and cattle. They 
also asked the Cons^ress at The Hao^ue for two 
Dutch men-of-war to protect the colonists against 
the Spaniards and King James, but for many good 
political reasons the request had to be denied. The 
war with Spain was to reopen the very next year, 
and the Dutch statesmen could not spare a single 
ship or cannon, neither did they wish to offend their 
British ally, James. 

De Forest then made application in 1621 to the 
English ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, offering 
to take out fifty or sixty Walloon families. The 



THE WALLOONS LN NEW NETHERLAND. 6 1 

document is a very curious one, with the contract 
or covenant of the petitioners in the centre and 
their names written as in a " round robin," Hke the 
spokes of a wheel. England's sovereign gave per- 
mission for this party of three hundred souls to 
settle in Virginia; but, as he was dreadfully poor, 
and was trying to get along without his Parliament, 
James could not and would not pay their expenses. 

At last Jesse de Forest's opportunity came, when 
the West India Company was formed. The direc- 
tors took up his scheme and carried it out in the 
settlements which became New York, Brooklyn, and 
Albany. One of the best and largest vessels of the 
time, named the Nezv Netherlands was fitted out. 
She was of a hundred tons' greater capacity than 
the Mayflower, and three times larger than Hudson's 
ship of discovery, the Half-Moon. Captain C. J. 
May was made governor of the new^ Dutch prov- 
inces, which included the territory out of which 
the four Middle states. New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, and Delaware, have been formed. Of 
the sixty families, some were to go to the South or 
Delaware River, some were to be left on Manhattan 
Island or the lower Hudson, and some were to be 
established with a fort at the head of navigation in 
the Mauritius or Hudson River near the mouth of 
the Mohawk. 

The splendid new vessel sailed out in March, 



62 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

1623, gay with the red and white striped flag of the 
Dutch United States navy and of the corporation. 
This latter was made by marking on the red, .white, 
and blue flag of the republic a monogram consisting 
of a large W, on the right and left lines of which 
were the letters G and C, which stood for the 
Chartered West India Company. Amid cheers and 
huzzas, with signs of sorrow as well as of joy, the 
good ship moved from her moorings near the 
Weeper's Tower, in which the harbor-master of 
Amsterdam still has his office. On board the clean 
and comfortable ship were intelligent, God-fearing 
people, who loved their Bibles and enjoyed worship. 
Although they had not their pastor on board, there 
were church of^cers called comforters of the sick. 
Four young couples on board were married at sea. 
The ship after a pleasant passage reached the Hud- 
son River in May. 

Inside of Sandy Hook in the Bay, Captain May 
found a French vessel which had come also to estab- 
lish a colony, on the basis of Verrazano's discovery 
of a century before ; but the Dutch gave notice that 
this was their country and they were going to hold 
it against all comers. Just at that time the little 
armed yacht Mackerel came down the river from 
Fort Nassau. The French, taking the hint, left, 
accompanied by their uninvited convoy out into the 
ocean. Going into the Delaware River, the French 



THE WALLOONS LN NEW NETIIERLAND. 63 

were warned off in like manner by the Dutch traders 
there. 

The Walloons were delighted with the new land, 
which they first beheld robed in the lovely garb of 
springtime. " Here we found," they wrote back in 
August, " beautiful rivers, bubbling fountains flow- 
ing down into the valleys, basins of running waters 
in the flat-lands ; agreeable fruits in the woods, such 
as strawberries, walnuts, and wild grapes. The woods 
abound with venison. There is considerable fish in 
the rivers ; good tillage land." 

In the distribution of the colonists, eight men were 
left on Manhattan Island and some families at the 
Wallabout or the Walloon's Bend, on Lons^ Island. 
When this great ship, one of the very largest per- 
haps that had thus far come to America, tried to go 
up the Hudson River, her captain found that there 
was not water deep enough for ships of this class. 
So when at Esopus Creek, where is now the city of 
Kingston, he lightened his vessel by putting some 
of the cargo in boats. The Nezv Netherland was 
thus enabled to make her way up to Fort Nassau, 
where Albany now stands. There the colonists 
were landed and began so promptly to plough and 
sow the ground, probably on the old maize lands of 
the Indians, that before Captain May started home- 
ward the sprouts were well up out of the soil. 

There was nothing slow about the Dutch, de- 



64 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

spite the sneers we have inherited from our English 
fathers ; for, meanwhile, the military men had laid 
out a well-built fort, quadrangular in shape, and an- 
other fort within a short distance. Eighteen families 
were left at Fort Orange. Thus began a settle- 
ment which in time became the first city north of 
Manhattan Island, in the whole United States ; that 
is, a settlement having a complete municipal or- 
ganization and charter. On the Delaware River, 
Captain May built a fort by the little stream called 
Timmer's Kill, where Gloucester, New Jersey, now 
stands. Here eight men were left, besides the four 
couples that had been married on the New Neth- 
crland while at sea. It is believed that a fort was 
also built on the Fresh or Connecticut River, at 
which two families and six men were left. 

The infant settlements were not left alone. In 
June, 1623, three ships, named the Orange Trei\ the 
Eagle, and the Love, were sent out with reinforce- 
ments by the West India Company. These were 
Dutch people from various states of the republic. 
Jesse de Forest died, possibly of overwork, in 1626, 
and his widow returned to Holland together with 
the young medical student Jean de la Montagne, 
who, on November 27 of the same year, married 
her daughter Rachel. No Longfellow, Hawthorne, 
or Boughton has, with pen or pencil, told of this 
episode of love, as they have of the Walloon maiden >^ 



THE WALLOOXS IN NEW NETHERLAND. 65 

Priscilla and John Alden. Ten years later, Dr. de 
la Montagne returned to New Netherland with his 
wife and children. 

The Congress was so well pleased with the suc- 
cess of the company that it granted a seal, such as 
every province, city, town, village, and community 
in the Netherlands has to this day. Inside of a 
wreath were the Latin letters for " Seal of New 
Netherland," set in a circle surmounted by a crown 
laid between stars. Within a beaded ring was a 
shield, within which was a string of beads and an- 
other shield on which was a beaver, with his plough- 
share-like nose, his chisel-like teeth, his shovel-like 
feet, and his great trowel-like tail. The beaver was 
to New Netherland what tobacco was to Virginia, 
— the emblem of wealth, the substitute for and 
equivalent of money, and the index of a country to 
be replenished and subdued. Later the same per- 
severing, industrious, and fur-bearing animal was 
figured on the first promises to pay, or the Con- 
tinental money issued by the thirteen United 
colonies. 

The seal of the city of New Amsterdam, on Man- 
hattan Island, consisted of a triple-leaved wreath, 
with a Latin motto meaning the " Seal of Amster- 
dam in New Netherland," over which rose the arms 
of the old city on the Amstel, surmounted by the 
figure of a beaver. Above this, filling the whole 



66 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

upper part of the seal, was the monogram of the 
West India Company, laid on an embossed scroll 
with drapery on either side. When, finally, the seal 
of the city of New York was made, the beaver, the 
windmill, and the flour barrel took their places to 
stay, and still remain. Ignorant people, who do not 
know the early history of New Netherland, imagine 
these vessels made by the cooper to have been beer 
barrels. Englishmen in the seventeenth century 
probably drank more beer than Dutch, with whom 
beer has never been especially popular, though it is 
much enjoyed by Germans, 

Thus began, under the red, white, and blue flag, 
the settlement of the Empire and Keystone states, 
of New Jersey and Delaware, by industrious, reli- 
gious, sober people of excellent traits and character. 
These Walloon Pilgrims from the land of freedom 
and of heroic and noble stock were soon followed 
by hundreds of Dutchmen, who came not only from 
Holland, but from Zealand, Friesland, Drenthe, and 
from many places in the Dutch United States. In 
the course of a generation or two, French was 
dropped and most of the people in New Netherland 
spoke the rich and vigorous language of Holland. 

The republican Dutchmen, although they had 
still to fight the Spaniards and make their freedom 
sure, took pride in their North American province. 
As early as 1625 the Elseviers, the famous printers 



THE WALLOONS LN NEW NETHRRLAND. 6/ 

of Leyden, who very probably gave employment to 
several of the printers in the Pilgrim company, 
published a book by De Laet, a director in the 
West India Company, entitled " New World, or the 
Description of the West Indies," which tells about 
the Dutch discoveries, explorations, and colonies. 

When Captain May's term of office expired, Ver- 
hulst was sent over as governor. Brick trading 
houses were built. A fresh instalment of one hun- 
dred head of cattle arrived. The three ships, con- 
taining also forty-five new colonists, were in the 
convo}^ of an armed yacht sent by the government. 
The great neatness and cleanliness, for which the 
Hollanders are noted, was shown in their ocean 
transportation of cattle. Such was their skill and 
care that only two animals died on the passage. 
Nevertheless, as soon as the poor creatures landed, 
despite every care, since cows are not botanists, 
they ate some poisonous weed while grazing, and 
about twenty of them died. The others multiplied, 
and soon milk, cream, butter, cheese, beef, and nour- 
ishing food were abundant. 

By the year 1625, the company, having got all 
of the capital necessary and the colony being in 
such a flourishing condition, Peter Minuit, a Wal- 
loon, was appointed director-general. Sailing in 
•the Sea-Mezu, with a proper staff of officers, he ar- 
rived on Manhattan Island in May, 1626. His first 



68 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

official act was that of an honorable Christian 
gentleman, and one that shows the honesty and 
liberal policy of the Dutch, his masters, who ac- 
knowledged the right of the Indians to the soil on 
which they dwelt. With all due ceremony and 
form, under the red, white, and blue fiag, the gov- 
ernor purchased from the Indians the island of 
Manhattan, for which he paid them sixty guilders, 
or twenty-four dollars, which would mean about 
one hundred dollars of the present value. As the 
Indians knew nothing, and cared nothing, about 
stamped metal money in gold and silver, Minuit 
paid them in red cloth, brass buttons, and various 
other things, thus getting about twent3^-two thou- 
sand acres for what seems to us a trifle. 

It was not a mere whim of Minuit, thus to pay 
the Indians for their land; for the Dutch govern- 
ment peremptorily ordered all Dutch settlers to 
take no land from the aborigines without fully satis- 
fying their claims. From the first, the Dutch policy 
with the Indians, as men worthy of trust and kind- 
ness, was a noble one. New York and Pennsylvania 
excel all the states in the number of their Indian 
deeds and tokens of the purchase of land by white 
men from red. The aborigines were treated with 
Christian consideration, rather than as Canaanites 
to be exterminated. 

Director-general Minuit found, in the settlement 



THE WALLOONS LN NEW NETHERLAND. 69 

on Manhattan Island, a well-laid-out fort, — for the 
Dutch were among the best engineers in Europe — 
a stone trading house, and a few dwelHngs built of 
logs. His council consisted of five members, who 
had the power of giving advice and trying offences, 
but no life could be taken without reference to the 
home government. Besides the councillors were the 
secretary and a schout. The first secretary was 
Isaac de Rasieres, who had come in the ship Arms 
of AjJisferdam. The schout, John Banope, was the 
first sheriff, and combined also the duties of prose- 
cuting officer; or, as we should now say, district 
attorney, for this peculiarly American office was in- 
troduced first in New York by the Dutch. 

The first ship returning to Amsterdam brought 
good news from New Netherland. The deputy 
from Congress, who was present at the meeting of 
the West India Company, wrote: " Our people there 
[in America] are of good courage and live peace- 
ably. Their women also have borne children there, 
they have bought the island Manhattes from the 
wild men for the value of sixty guilders. . . . They 
sowed all their grain in the middle of May, and 
harvested it in the middle of August." He then 
gives a list of samples of summer grain, such as 
wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, canary seed, 
beans, and flax. The cargo of the ship Arms of 
Amsterdam contained 7246 beaver, 853 otter, and 



70 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

151 skins of minks, lynxes, muskrats, and other 
animals, with much timber of oak and walnut 
wood. 

The government of Minuit seems to have been 
one of steady colonial development. He left his 
office in 1633, and was succeeded by Governor 
Wouter Van Twiller, who served five years. Will- 
iam Kieft was next in office, from 1638 to 1647. 
Governor Petrus Stuyvesant, the last Dutch gov- 
ernor, served the longest term, — from 1647 to 1664. 



CHAPTER VI. • 

OUR DUTCH FOREFATHERS. 

WHAT were the characteristics of the people 
who first, before 1664, settled the Middle 
states ? What kind of men and women did the 
Dutch republic produce ? What sort of colonists 
did they make ? What did they bring over from 
Holland, which has entered into our American 
social and national life ? While the Pilgrims have 
been glorified and the Puritans transfigured, the 
Dutch have been caricatured by Washington Irving, 
and Americans have inherited the prejudices of Eng- 
lishmen. Let history give the facts. 

The government of New Netherland was en- 
trusted to a trading company, and the Dutch peo- 
ple under its rule were not as the Walloons or 
Pilgrims. They had not come, as in Virginia, for 
either adventure or gold ; or, as in Massachusetts, on 
account of religious persecution; or, as in other colo- 
nies, in the name of politics, religion, or philanthropy. 
They went out of a republic, simply as in later 
times ; the people from the United States, east of 
the Alleghanies, crossed the mountains and prairies 
to settle the Western states, that is, to better their 

71 



72 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

conditions, to find new homes in a new country. 
They had only feehngs of gratitude to the land and 
people in the old home. 

Religio-n and education were cared for in New 
Netherland. Although the people had their Bibles 
and catechisms and church officers called " com- 
forters of the sick," they were without a minister 
of the gospel, until 1628. Then the Rev. Jonas 
Michaelius, who had been a student in Leyden, 
while the Pilgrims lived there, arrived. He found 
that there were in all New Netherland about three 
hundred colonists. The farmers of Manhattan 
Island were in great need of laborers. Plenty of 
timber had been cut and a windmill built to saw 
the logs into boards. A grist-mill to turn the grain 
into flour was worked by horse power. Experiments 
in baking brick from the clay, making lime from 
oyster shells, potash from wood ashes, and salt by 
evaporating sea water, showed that the lively and 
inventive Netherlanders were, like the busy bee, 
" improving every hour." Some seemed over-vent- 
urous. Wood-cutters were in the forest shaping 
beams, posts, knees, and spars for a great ship which 
was to be larger than anything yet built, even in 
Holland, and which was between eight and twelve 
hundred tons' burden. Troubles between the Indians 
had begun, for the Mohicans and Iroquois were at 
war, which spoiled for a time the fur trade. Minuit 



OUR DUTCH FOREFATHERS. 73 

ordered some of the people from Fort Orange to 
come down to Manhattan for safety. 

A Dutchman calls his pastor " Domine." Scot- 
tish folks call a " stickit minister," or a schoolmas- 
ter, a " Dominie." The Dutch used good unaltered 
Latin. We ought to do likewise. In the primitive 
settlement of log cabin and bark huts, Domine 
Michaelius organized a church. Although the 
people were all free, and some rough and loose, 
like most colonists and frontiersmen, yet the 
Domine found that many had brought their cer- 
tificates of church membership with them. Direc- 
tor Minuit and the storekeeper of the company 
were made church officers. The former gen- 
tleman had been a deacon in the Dutch church 
and the latter an elder in the French church 
at Wesel, where many English refugees during 
Bloody Mary's rule dwelt and where the first 
synod of the Reformed churches in the Nether- 
lands had been held. At the first celebration 
of the Lord's Supper, in the meeting-house, which 
was in the second story of the horse mill, no fewer 
than fifty communicants enjoyed this Christian 
privilege. Fortunately Michaelius could preach in 
two languages. He thus served both the Walloon 
and Huguenot people and the Dutch folks. 

The Consistory, as the governing body of a 
Dutch or Reformed church is called, whether in 



74 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Holland, America, or South Africa, consisted of 
four persons, including the Domine and elder 
Sebastian Crol, who was in command at Fort 
Orange. This pioneer was not only a good and 
intelligent leader, but is the traditional inventor 
of the " cruller," of which the doughnut is the 
coarser expression. In the long winter months, 
when it was difficult to procure meat, Sebastian 
Crol, whose name was pronounced Crull, made the 
cruller a pretty fair substitute for steaks, chops, and 
sausages. 

o 

The Domine's letter dated August ii, 1828, 
and unearthed in 1858, was addressed to his friend 
Domine Smout of Amsterdam, — that hot and 
intolerant enemy of the Arminians who was de- 
servedly lampooned by the poet Vondel. 

Michaelius wrote about the Indians in pretty 
much the same spirit as Edward Winslow of Mas- 
sachusetts did about Massasoit and his followers. 
The modern science of comparative religion, in- 
itiated by the Dutch, who first introduced Oriental 
studies in Europe, had not then been formulated. 
At first the Domine thought these men, cased in 
a skin tinted like old copper, were strangers to all 
decency, uncivil and unscrupulous, " who serve no- 
body but the devil." Nevertheless, he at once 
besan to take thought for their salvation, and make 
plans which his successors enlarged and carried out. 



OUR DUTCH FOREFATHERS. 75 

Of all the colonists who came to America, none, 
in the long run, treated the Indians more Chris- 
tianly and humanely than the Dutch. 

The company promised to maintain preachers, 
schoolmasters, and comforters of the sick, but they 
did not at first carry out their agreements very 
well. Soulless corporations, as a rule, care more 
to make money than to keep promises. Never- 
theless, there were soon in New Netherland four 
well-educated ministers, learned men and graduates 
of universities. The Dutch, who founded and en- 
dowed the four universities of Leyden, Franeker, 
Groningen, and Utrecht, during their war of inde- 
pendence, and two more, Harderwijk and Amster- 
dam, when they had won their freedom, insisted 
upon a learned ministry. They were more afraid 
of ignorance than they were of the Spaniards. 
During the era of their " Golden Lion," in the seven- 
teenth century, the little republic in size, less than 
half the size of South Carolina, led all Europe in 
learning and inventions. 

Churches, nearly every one of which had a school 
attached to it, sprang up in the Hudson and 
Mohawk valleys and on Long Island. Before 
1664 thirteen ministers had been provided, of 
whom seven were serving as pastors at the time 
of the English conquest, and eleven churches 
were in existence, besides one or two out stations. 



76 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Some of these scholarly clergymen were writers 
of books, including excellent descriptions of the 
new country, and some composed poetry. Domine 
Steendam's verses, " The Complaint of New Am- 
sterdam to her Mother" and "The Praise of New 
Netherland," are well known. 

The Rev. Joliannes Van Mechlin was another 
scholarly minister. He was son of a Walloon 
pastor at Egmont-on-the-Sea in North Holland. 
He is best known as " Domine Megapolensis," for, 
like most learned men in those days, he Latinized 
his name. He made friends with the Jesuit Fathers, 
Jogues, Bressanni, and La Moyne. He arrived in 
1642, with a party of immigrants, to help build up 
the patroon's settlement at Rensselaerwyk (now 
Albany). He studied the language of the Mohawk 
Indians, preaching and teaching them gospel truths, 
three years before John Eliot began his ministry. 
At first the red men laughed, scoffed, or got tired 
and slunk away, but soon he moved their hearts. 
From that time, for a century on, Indian converts 
were common in the Dutch valley churches, besides 
schools for the religious instruction of the Indian 
children. In his later days, when at New Amster- 
dam, the Domine became rather Puritanical and 
showed an intolerant spirit toward the Lutherans 
and Independents. This was entirely opposed to 
the Dutch idea that " where persecution begins, 



OUR DUTCH forefathers;. yy 

Christianity ends." By the very next mail from 
the mother countr)', both the parson and the gov- 
ernor were rebuked for their hot-headed folly, and 
warned not to be too precise in matters indifferent. 
They gave Stuyvesant to understand that in affairs 
of conscience all colonists, from whatever country or 
whatever church, were to enjoy the same freedom as 
in the mother country. 

Despite the angry quarrels between individual 
hot-headed Calvinists and Arminians, toleration was 
the law of the Dutch republic. As early as 1577, 
before Roger Williams was born, William the Silent 
had laid the corner stone of the Dutch, as it is of the 
American, republic in these words : " We declare 
that you have no right to interfere with the con- 
science of any one." Hence it was that among the 
Dutch in America, those driven out of New Ens;- 
land found refuge in New Netherland. The church 
records show that despite some irregularities in 
morals, natural to a frontier and colonial life, the 
standard of social morality in New Netherland was 
not exceeded, if it was equalled, by any colony on 
the Atlantic coast. 

Other books were written. One was by the law- 
yer Van der Donck, the " yonkheer," or young 
master, after whom Yonkers is named. The literary 
activity of New Netherland was very creditable to 
so small a colony, for the number of Dutchmen 



78 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

actually settled between New Castle in Delaware 
and Schenectady on the Mohawk, and between 
Montauk Point and the Catskills, probably never at 
any one time exceeded five thousand. The number 
of those who came and went, lived or died on the 
soil, during the forty-one years of the colony's life 
as a Dutch possession, never exceeded fifteen thou- 
sand. On the James River and in Massachusetts, 
in 1664, these numbers could be multiplied fourfold. 
It is hard to get people who are living in pros- 
perity to leave their own homes and to colonize new 
lands. Emigration from the Old to New Nether- 
land w^as so slow, that in 1629 the directors of 
" John Company," as it was popularly called, hit 
upon a new plan and published a Charter of Privi- 
leges and Exemptions. This allowed the directors 
and some others to be " patroons " of New Nether- 
land. This term is very old in Holland, and means 
a captain or lord of an estate. Whoever should, 
within the space of four years, undertake to plant 
a colony of fifty people over fifteen years of age in 
New Netherland, should be allowed as his absolute 
property sixteen miles of territory on one side of 
any river in New Netherland, or eight miles on both 
sides, without limit of the land back from the stream ; 
but the land must be bought first from the Indians 
who lived upon it. The patroon was to own the 
land. The settlers could only live on it, while even 



OUR DUTCH FOREFATHERS. 79 

the privileges of hunting and fishing, and the fish, 
the timber, and the minerals were reserved as his 
own. Neither the patroons nor their tenantry 
could engage in the fur trade, for that was to be the 
privilege of the company. For ten years the 
patroons and the farmers on their land were to be 
free from taxes, or service, and were to be protected 
by the soldiers and sailors of this armed commercial 
corporation. 

Altogether, the patroon system was a curious 
mixture of great privileges and petty restrictions. 
Soon after this, two of the directors, Samuel Blom- 
maert and Samuel Bodyn, became patroons and 
bought lands on the Delaware River. Very prob- 
ably the name of their settlement, meaning " Swan 
Valley," had reference to that wonderfully beautiful 
reo-ion alonQ^ the Waal River in Brabant, where is 
located the legend of the White Swans which 
Wagner has made familiar in the opera of " Lohen- 
grin." Kilian Van Rensselaer, an Amsterdam pearl- 
importer, bought many miles of land north and 
south of Fort Orange, calling it Rensselaerwyk. 
Michael Paauw secured lands on the Hudson River 
which he called Pavonia, which is the Latin for his 
own Dutch name, which means Peacock. 

The Dutch claimed New Netherland by the triple 
right of discovery, exploration, and occupation. 
They not only resisted the attempts of the English 



8o THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONfZ AT/ON 

to enter the Hudson River, but they sent a party of 
men led by Jacobus Van Curler into the Connecticut 
River to buy the land from the Indian owners and to 
erect a trading house there. Since they had first 
entered this stream, one would hardly have thought 
it necessary to fortify their title by purchase. Yet 
to make their claim sure, and to hasten the adjust- 
ment of the boundary line between New Netherland 
and New England, the land for about sixty miles 
from Long Island Sound, including the site of 
Hartford, was bought from the Indian occupants, 
besides another tract at the mouth of the river, 
called Kieviets Hoek. The arms of the West 
India Company were nailed upon a tree to show 
possession. In the neighborhood of the present 
Colt's Firearm Factory, in Hartford, where the 
street names to-day recall Dutch history, a redoubt 
and dwellings were built and called the House of 
Good Hope. Here two small cannon were mounted 
in charge of an old artillery soldier named Hans 
Janse Eencluys. 

These Dutchmen in New Netherland were not 
the over-fat, beer-swilling, pig-eyed, boasting, and 
vulgar fellows pictured by Washington Irving. 
The average Hollander is probably not as heavy in 
weight as the average Englishman. In his pictures, 
poems, speeches, novels, and theatres, the modern 
American and often the educated person makes his 



OUR DUTCH FOKEFATHEKS. 8 1 

Dutchmen talk German or " Pennsylvania Dutch," 
— which is not Dutch, but late American-German. 
The average settler in New Netherland was quite 
the equal of the average colonist anywhere from 
Maine to Georgia. In devoutness, honesty, social 
morality, intelligence, and the enterprise that makes 
good homes and supports churches and schools, the 
New Netherlander was above the average European 
colonist in America. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE THREE VAN CURLERS. 

WAN RENSSELAER MANOR was the only 
' one that proved an entire success, and this 
was made so chiefly through the exertions and ad- 
dress of the commissary or superintendent, Arendt 
Van Curler, cousin of the patroon and one of the 
noblest characters in all the history of the thirteen 
colonies. He was a man of sterling character, of 
generous culture, and of tremendous energy, withal 
possessed of many Christian graces and virtues. 
Finding that the only communication with Man- 
hattan Island was very slow, because the sloops 
were often becalmed in the river, he used canoes 
and light sailing boats, by which he hurried forward 
new colonists immediately after their arrival. He 
imported cattle, swine, and horses, suppressed muti- 
nies, cheered up the people, made friends with the 
Indians, and rescued or ransomed Christian captives, 
especially Frenchmen, from torture and death at 
the hands of the Iroquois. He explored the coun- 
try round about, and was probably the first white 
man to make a journey through the Mohawk valley. 

82 



THE THREE VAN CURLERS. 83 

In a document still extant he described this fair 
region in witty and brilliant fashion. 

There were three Van Curlers in the colony, and 
these three were typical of the three distinct types 
of Dutchmen who settled New Netherland. The 
least important of them all, Anthony, is the one 
most popularly known, because Washington Irving 
has made of him a tremendous caricature. Irvine's 
fanciful sketch has been enlarged during successive 
generations by comic artists and made into many 
pictures ; while Arendt, who was one of the really 
great makers of America, is unknown to most 
people. 

Who has not read of the "jolly robustious trum- 
peter named Anthony Van Corlear, famous for his 
long wind, who led a roystering life, giving dances 
to the wives and daughters of the Burghers of the 
Manhattoes," " commandant of windmills and cham- 
pion of New Amsterdam," who in Connecticut 
" twanged his trumpet like a very devil," and who 
at last Spyt den Duivel blew his last blast and sank 
to the bottom in trying to swim the Harlem River, 
giving his name to Anthony's Nose on the Hudson } 

The historical foundation for Irvine's fiement of 
fancy is simply this. A banquet was given to Myn- 
heer de Vries in the angle of the fort, and the trum- 
peter Anthony Van Curler, or " Corlaer," blew his 
trumpet at "the height of the feast ; for this he was 



84 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

scolded by a shopman and a supercargo. This the 
trumpeter resented, so that for a while there was some 
danger of a quarrel ending in bloodshed. Anthony 
the trumpeter having given to each of the mercantile 
men a drubbing, they ran home, vowing vengeance, 
and got their swords. However, their wrath evap- 
orated in words. In the morning "they feared the 
trumpeter more than they sought him." On this 
tiny pebble of fact, a tremendous superstructure of 
art, legends, jokes, and caricatures has been built. 

Anthony Van Curler's ancestors lived at Stavo- 
ren in Friesland, where of old was the rich city and 
shrine of Stavo, the Frisian Thor whose name we 
have in Thursday. One of them, a woman, asked 
her husband, a ship captain, to bring her back "the 
most precious thing in the w'orld." The good man 
did so, and returned with wheat. Disappointed and 
angry, she ordered the grain to be thrown overboard. 
This was done. The grain sprouted and formed a 
sand bank, which ruined the harbor, as one knows 
who has seen the broad grass-grown bar in front of 
the harbor, called the " Vrouwensand." Anthony 
came to America in a Portuguese ship and, liking 
the new country, remained. H 

The trumpeter was a striking and picturesque 
figure not only in all the countries of Europe in the 
sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, but notably 
so among those triumphant republicans of the Neth- 




'THE TRUMPETER WAS A STRIKING AND PICTURESQUE FIGURE.'^ 



THE THREE VAN CURLERS. 85 

erlands who had humbled kings and emperors. 
WiUiam Bradford tells of the great show and form 
made by a richly costumed, Dutch trumpeter, who 
accompanied Isaac de Rasieres, when the latter 
visited the Plymouth men, to bear the greetings of 
their fellow-Christians at Manhattan. The repub- 
lican trumpeters had the red, white, and blue silk 
flag hanging from their trumpets. Sometimes this 
took on a resplendent phase, as when, after some 
great victory over the Spaniards, they used a flag of 
twenty-one stripes, or seven series of the red, white, 
and blue, indicative of the seven states of the re- 
public. The Dutch were as intensely fond of color 
and brilliancy in their art, costumes, gardens, and 
heraldry, as they were of plainness and severity in 
their churches. Puritans in religion and morals, as 
many of them were, they loved all bright and beauti- 
ful things and the joys and graces of life. 

Jacobus Van Cm^ler, whose name is preserved in 
" Corlear s Hook " in the borough of Manhattan, in 
Greater New York, was a schoolmaster in New 
Amsterdam and a landowner on Long Island. He 
stands as a fine type of the educated Dutch gentle- 
man, who had neither poverty nor riches. Gov- 
ernor Kieft, when it was vitally important that the 
Dutch and English nations should preserve friend- 
ship, sent Jacobus Van Curler into Connecticut to 
take command of the House of Good Hope. He 



86 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

was ordered, at all hazards, to keep the peace. Act- 
ing wisely and honorably. Jacobus received the 
approval of his superiors. He was also one of the 
ten or more schoolmasters in New Netherland who 
helped to keep popular intelligence in pace with 
religion. Afterwards he purchased Long Island 
from the Indians. Honest, wise, and brave was 
Jacobus Van Curler, one of the fine types of the 
middle class among the founders of the Empire 
State. 

It is undoubtedly true that the seaport on Man- 
hattan Island, where, before 1664, no fewer than 
fourteen languages were spoken, had probably its 
full share of dram-shops and of the kind of floating 
population noted for drunkenness, brawls, and immo- 
rality. Yet the average life, both at the seaport and 
the inland settlements, in spite of rough pioneer 
work and frontier experiences, was softened by high 
ancestral ideals, ornamented and purified by educa- 
tion, and made beautiful and aspiring by religion. 

Arendt Van Curler was among the very noblest 
of the men who founded New Netherland. He has 
also one of the best records made by any of the 
makers of America. He arrived at Fort Orange in 
1630. He put new life in the colony of Rensselaer- 
wyk. He quickly showed himself a far-sighted 
statesman. He understood the situation at once. 
If the French in Canada were able to win over to 



THE THREE VAN CURLERS. 8/ 

their side the great Confederacy of the Five Nations 
of the Iroquois Indians, then they would very hkely 
get possession of all North America. This Van 
Curler determined they should not do. When 
Champlain, in 1609, interfered in the quarrels 
between the Algonquin and Iroquois Indians, by 
taking sides with his arquebus in the battle by the 
shore of the lake, he sounded the death-knell of 
French power in America. The angered and de- 
feated Iroquois came to Fort Orange, as early as 
161 2, and supplied themselves with firearms. Eel- 
kins, the commander, made with them a league of 
peace and friendship, and the Dutch and the Iro- 
quois remained friends for many years. Arendt 
Van Curler determined to make this league more 
solemn and perpetual. Despite occasional out- 
breaks, the policy of the Dutch with the Indians 
was from the first peaceful. Van Curler learned 
the Indians' language, their manners and customs, 
mastered their sio;ns, and divined the meaninor of 
their secret societies. Before the end of his life, he 
was one of the very few white men in America who 
knew the most sacred traditions of the red men and 
had been initiated into their mystic fraternity. In 
presence of their greatest chiefs, at the sacred spot 
of Tawasentha, on Norman's Kill, just below 
Albany, " the place of many dead," the holy sepul- 
chre of the fathers and the seat of Hiawatha's first 



88 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZA TION. 

civilizing work, he reconfirmed the perpetual league 
of peace and friendship with the Five Nations of 
Iroquois Indians. 

This was a mighty stroke of policy, which had a 
profound influence in determining future American 
history and in saving the continent of North 
America to the ideas of Germanic instead of Latin 
civilization. It was like building a great break- 
water, or an immovable dike, stretching from the 
Hudson River to Niagara, which protected the 
colonies against French invasion from Canada. 
It was surer, in its intended results, than was the 
Great Wall of China, which stretches across moun- 
tain, river, and plain over a distance as great as be- 
tween Philadelphia and Kansas City. Masonry and 
brick could never keep out the Tartars from the 
Middle Kingdom, but the " Covenant of Corlaer " 
prevented the French from ever possessing the 
Hudson valley and its gateway to the ocean. For 
a hundred and fifty years, the " Bourbonnieres " in 
the North tried to break this dike of defence, but 
neither by gold, nor bribes, nor diplomacy, nor by 
sending their priests among the Iroquois, nor by 
armed invasions, were the French ever able to win 
away the friendship of the Iroquois for the Dutch, 
and the English their heirs. The savages always 
remained " faithful to the Covenant of Corlaer." 
This friendship of the mightiest confederacy of 



THE THREE VAN CURLERS. 89 

Indians on the continent was most potent in finally 
deciding the ownership of North America. 

When the English conquest of 1664 took place, 
Arendt Van Curler was at once sought for by 
Colonel Nichols to have the friendship of the Five 
Nations transferred to the English. Then Van 
Curler met the chiefs, and " the silver chain was 
brightened " and maintained until the Revolution, 
when the white men themselves, Americans and 
English, separated. In the long wars in America 
between England and France, Peter Schuyler and 
Sir William Johnson continued the work of Van 
Curler. The Iroquois confederacy was the one 
decisive element and fact which prevented the 
French from cutting the chain of the colonies in 
two by seizing New York and thus dividing New 
England from the Southern colonies. 

The impression made on the Indians by the 
commanding personality of Arendt Van Curler is 
easily seen in the title they gave him. The red 
men addressed the colonial governors, whose names 
they could not and did not care to remember, in 
varying terms. They called one a pen, another a 
rock, or a mountain, or a fish, employing some 
metaphorical or merely official term, but they always 
called the governors of New York by the personal 
name of " Corlaer." To this day, the proud title 
of Queen Victoria in use among the Canadian red 



90 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

men is " Kora-Kowa," which means " The Illustri- 
ous Van Curler," or " the great Corlaer." Kowa 
means great, and Kora is only the corruption of the 
name Curler. 

Arendt Van Curler was always the friend of order, 
morals, and religion. A devout man, a steadfast 
friend, a loving husband, yet he was a man of prog- 
ress. He educated himself out of the semi-feudal- 
ism of the patroon system and became intelligently 
hostile to monopoly and the selfishness of absentee 
proprietorship. He opposed strenuously the selling 
of intoxicating liquors to the Indians, persuading 
them to use, instead, the white man's beverage, beer, 
which at that time, before the days of tea and coffee, 
all civilized men drank. Van Curler w^as one of the 
first temperance reformers in America. A man of 
unspotted truth, he was believed in even by the 
French. He was equally trusted by English, by 
Dutch, and by the Indians. He was a man of 
impartial justice to all, and, as the greatest man in 
northern New Netheldand, he was the servant of all. 
In a word, he was a man of light and- leading. 

Arendt Van Curler came over as a young bache- 
lor, but when determined to leave the patroon's 
service, he led westward a colony of free farmers. 
With them he bought land from the Indians of the 
Mohawk valley, holding it in fee simple, so as to 
(jive it to children or heirs. He married the widow 



THE THREE VAN CURLERS. 9 1 

of Jonas Bronck, after whom Bronxville takes its 
name. This Jonas Bronck, by the way, was one of 
the first men in America to own and enjoy Japa- 
nese works of art, including one of the splendid 
swords for which the artificers of the Mikado's em- 
pire are famous. In fiction Mrs. Catherwood has 
pictured him in her romance, " The Lady of Fort 
St. John." 

Van Curler made a voyage to Holland and then 
on his return purchased the land of the Great Flat, 
in the Mohawk valley. In 1661, with his company 
of fourteen men, with their families, he founded 
Schenectady, a village fortified with palisades, hav- 
ing the church in the centre. Long considered as 
the frontier town of " The Far West," Schenectady 
stood against monopolists and men like Andros, for 
progress and for free and unshackled commerce. 

When Van Curler was invited by Governor 
Tracy to visit him in Canada, — for all Frenchmen 
were very grateful to him for having ransomed or 
rescued several Jesuit missionaries from the Ind- 
ians, — he started to go. In a great storm on 
Lake Champlain, having, as the superstitious natives 
imagined, insulted their gods, the founder of the 
Dutch peace policy with the Indians was drowned. 

How Van Curler met his death was told by his 
red friends in a way that curiously illustrates their 
geography and religion. In the middle of the lake 



92 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

lying between the Green and the Adirondack 
mountains, beside which Champlain fired the shot 
that gave America to the Germanic peoples, rises a 
famous island called Rock Regio. This landmark 
rising out of the water was the ancient boundary 
between the Algonquin and the Iroquois tribes. A 
canoe from either north or south passing the shadow 
of this rock, even in time of peace, except by special 
treaty, became lawful spoil. Here, as the forest 
warriors believed, dwelt a god who watched over 
the covenant and could raise storms and punish 
intruders and all who displeased him. The Indians 
never passed Rock Regio without paying homage 
to the god of the boundary, by casting a pipe, a 
knife, or some tobacco into the water as a sacred 
act. Arendt Van Curler laughed at the Indians 
and their notions, and made comic gestures in 
mockery. Soon a storm arose, the light canoes 
were tossed about and overturned, and Van Curler 
was drowned. This the red men attributed to the 
anger of the god. They mourned greatly over 
their good friend. 

Arendt Van Curler's name survives and soars 
through the ages on the " winged words " of the 
Iroquois language. His memory also lives in " Cor- 
laer's Rock," " Corlaer's Bay," and in " Arendt's 
Kill," a stream near the city of Catskill ; while his 
city on the Mohawk was long called by the French 



THE THREE VAN' CURLERS. 93 

" the town of Corlaer " and Lake Champlain " Cor- 
laers Lake." On the seal of the fair city of Sche- 
nectady, which he founded, is engraved a sheaf of 
ripe wheat, or what was anciently called corn, for 
Curler means Korn-aar or corn-ear. Better than 
his female ancestor of Stavoren, did Arendt Van 
Curler sow seed, which we still reap in harvests of 
national prosperity. 

The Dutchmen in New Netherland were deter- 
mined to have representative 'government, even 
though many of them had settled on the patroons' 
manors. The majority of colonists, however, lived 
outside of these manors on free land. Under Gov- 
ernor Kieft a representative body was formed for 
the purpose of consultation in the enactment of 
laws. These " eight men " assembled first on Sep- 
tember 15, 1643. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FREE CHURCHMEN IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 

SWITZERLAND is a little country, not much 
more than half the size of South Carolina, 
which has grandly contributed to the making of 
the United States of America. For centuries her 
twenty-two cantons, or counties, have been united in 
federal union. Amid the great monarchies around 
them, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, the Swiss 
have maintained freedom in their Alpine home. 
Out from their valleys and off their mountain slopes, 
during the past three hundred years, have come 
thousands of intelligent people to colonize America. 
Especially do the Carolinas and Pennsylvania owe 
much to the Swiss. Many of the ablest military 
officers in colonial days, and in later times some of 
our most eminent educators and men of science, 
were from Switzerland. 

Yet the greatest debt of our nation is to the Swiss 
free churchmen, who separated religion from politi- 
cal control, and the church from the intermeddling 
of magistrates. These Christians taught and lived 

94 



FREE CHURCHMEN IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 95 

and died for the doctrine that lies at the basis of 
>sy the Constitution of the United States, — tliat con-- 
science is free. These separatists from the poHtical 
churches were the spiritual forefathers of millions of 
American people. 

Wherever the Bible is put into the language of 
the common people and widely read, there will 
necessarily be great changes of thought, and much 
intellectual activity. Erasmus of Rotterdam col- 
lected many manuscripts, and in 15 i6 issued a new 
edition of the Greek New Testament. He then 
translated the text into elegant Latin, which pleased 
the scholars, who began to put the Holy Scriptures 
into the various languages of Europe. In the Swiss 
republic, the Christian people, through reading the 
Bible, became convinced that society and the church 
ought to be thoroughly reformed for the better. 
They noticed at once the difference between the 
extravagance and the usurpation of authority by 
the princes in both Church and State, and the sim- 
plicity of Jesus and the primitive church. Such a 
contrast seemed too great, and as displeasing to God 
as it was bad for men. 

These " Brethren," nicknamed " Anabaptists," 
were at first persecuted by both Protestants and 
Catholics. Driven out of Switzerland, they fled 
to the Netherlands. Soon they and their doctrines 
had so spread into other countries, that all western 



96 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Europe was more or less moved by the new ideas. 
Some of these Brethren abused their freedom. 
They became so outrageous in their excesses that 
no civiHzed society could tolerate them. But when 
Menno Simons of Friesland trained and organized, 
and William, the stadholder of Zealand, shielded and 
tolerated, these independents in religion, they be- 
came a cjuiet, orderly, and influential people called 
the Mennonites. 

These forerunners of American freedom held to 
most of the ideas which now belong to enlightened 
Christianity and the nineteenth century. Yet no 
one would ever suppose this from the misrepresen- 
tations of their enemies in unrevised reference 
books. They believed not only in the separation 
of Church and State, in " soul liberty " or freedom of 
conscience, the abolition of religious persecution, in 
the right and ability of Christian people to govern 
themselves, but also in prison reform, in the salva- 
tion of infants and of the pious heathen, in home 
and foreign missionary work, in the removal of the 
death-penalty for crime, in the abolition of slavery 
and serfdom, and in the education of women. 
Menno Simons and William of Orange, as well as 
Calvin and Luther, are the spiritual ancestors of 
modern democracy. 

It was these free-church Christians who wrought 
the first reformatory influences among the common 



FREE CFIURCHMEN IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 97 

people of the Netherlands and Great Britain. 
Their teachings were actively propagated in Eng- 
land as early as the year 1525. By the year 1550, 
these had become so widely disseminated among 
the English people, that it was thought necessary 
by the government, which was a political and 
ecclesiastical combination, to appoint a great com- 
mission of bishops and others to hunt down 
the Separatists, and have them tried and burned. 
European statesmen in that age thought that this 
was the best way of preserving the church, that is, 
by the cremation of all nonconformists. Neverthe- 
less, these free churchmen increased, and out of 
them have grown three or more of the greatest 
Christian denominations in the United States of 
America. Other Christians, who have been taught 
to despise the " Anabaptists," now look upon them 
as true spiritual ancestors. Slaughtered by the tens 
of thousands, these fearless thinkers, who honestly 
tried to put in practice the teachings of the Bible, 
prepared the way for modern civilization. 

In Ens^land the reformation came on in three 
great waves from the Continent. The first move- 
ment was propagated by the ultra-democratic free 
churchmen; the second by the Lutherans, who were 
led by princes ; and the third by the democratic 
Calvinists. King Henry VIII. made the national 
church independent of the Roman Pontiff. In 



98 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the north of England, which was then much 
poorer and more sparsely settled than in the south, 
there were reactions in favor of the old forms of 
religion. In one great uprising, called " The Pil- 
grimage of Grace," the people, led by discontented 
nobles, gathered in arms. Mobs entered the 
churches, flung the Bible out of the windows, set 
up the cross, and clamored for the old festivals and 
monasteries. King Henry marched up from the 
south and put down the rebellion with an iron 
hand. For months the executioners, with axe, 
sword, and rope, were kept busy. The horrible 
sight of corpses on gibbets made both a terror to 
the mind and an offence to the senses. 

Under Bloody Mary the reaction was in the other 
direction. She put hundreds of people of the Re- 
formed faith to death, while thousands more fled 
from England to the Continent. In Embden, 
Frankfort, and Geneva, the Puritan parties were 
formed and theories elaborated. Yet when these 
reforming Englishmen came back home, they found 
that Queen Elizabeth wanted no Puritans, but 
everything in Church and State uniform. She 
persecuted both the Puritans and the Roman 
Catholics. When the people again arose with 
arms, in the movement called " The Uprising of 
the North," she crushed this with blood and iron 
and " covered the whole country with gibbets." 



FREE CHURCHMEN IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 99 

All free churchmen caught in her realm were 
imprisoned, hanged, or burnt to death. 

In Scotland, however, the Puritans won per- 
manent victory. The Bible became the national 
text-book, the Psalms the Scottish hymn-book, and 
family worship the rule. Robert Burns' poem " The 
Cotter's Saturday Night " is the epic of Scotland. 
The Scottish people are pervaded with democratic 
ideas, quite different from the aristocratic and semi- 
feudal spirit which still has possession of English 
society. What breeds in Americans hatred to the 
wrong side of England, which has led to two wars 
and might have led to others, is that also which 
nonconformists or free churchmen in England also 
hate and fis^ht. All Qrood and true Americans love 
and reverence the nobler England, whose good 
ways and works we are proud to imitate. Next to 
England, perhaps, America is indebted most for 
good men and women, in both numbers and quality, 
to Scotland. 

Indirectly the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots had 
much to do with the gathering of that English 
company of free churchmen in North England, 
afterwards known as the Pilgrims, and with their 
flight to Holland, their crossing the ocean in the 
Mayjiower, and the settlement of Massachusetts. 
We must therefore mention her name first, when 
we introduce them. Once almost invisible in the 



lOO THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

world's eye, these Scrooby villagers loom colossal in 
American history. 

When Mary married Bothwell, only three months 
after her first husband, Lord Darnley, had been 
killed, the Scottish people rose up in arms against 
her. She fled into England, to lie in prison eigh- 
teen years, and to become the centre of a network 
of Romish plots. When her son, James VI. of 
Scotland, was made king, the envoys of France 
came to Edinburgh to persuade him to enter into 
an alliance against England. It was then necessary 
for Queen Elizabeth to prevent such a dangerous 
union of forces. So in 1583 she sent her trusted 
counsellor William Davison, an Englishman of 
Scottish descent, to hinder the alliance and in place 
of it to form a British league of friendship. 

In the England of that day there were no roads, as 
we understand the term now; for there were then very 
few wheeled wagons, and even these had no springs. 
Such things as pleasure carriages were almost un- 
known, or were brand-new curiosities introduced 
from the Continent. In the whole country, out- 
side the immediate neighborhood of the few large 
cities, there were only horse tracks or paths. Four 
of these, being very long, were called " highroads," 
— one going south from London to Dover, whence 
men sailed to France and the Continent ; one south- 
westward to Plymouth, where lay the royal ships ; 



FREE CHURCHMEN IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 10 1 

one westward through Wales, by which one crossed 
over to Ireland. The Great North Road, longest of 
all, ran into Scotland. Women rarely travelled so 
far, and when they did it was on horseback. There 
were no post-ofifices or mail-routes for the people, 
but at certain distances along these royal highroads 
were relays or inns where the post-riders who car- 
ried the government's despatches could get entertain- 
ment for man and horse over night. Keepers of 
these inns were called "posts," who had ready a 
certain number of horses, in order to help forward 
the king's business. The later days of stage-coaches, 
and the still more modern era of excellent common 
roads and of iron railways, have totally changed not 
only the methods of travel, but also the face of the 
country. The work done, in drainage and embank- 
ments, since engineering has been elevated into 
a profession, has converted thousands of acres of 
deadly miasmatic swamp into fertile fields. 

In the time of Elizabeth the keeper of the relay 
at the little place called Scrooby was named Brews- 
ter. He had a bright boy named William, who at 
that time was a student at Cambridge. The youth 
was probably home from a vacation when the queen's 
envoy William Davison came along. As it was in 
January and probably cold and muddy, it may be 
that Davison stayed all night and told young Brews- 
ter, as they sat around the great hearthstone, before 



102 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the blazing chimney, of the rich cities of the Nether- 
lands, — then so much more magnificent than those 
in England, — and of his many adventures in the 
mighty continental world beyond the little island 
ruled by Elizabeth. It may be that Davison asked 
young Brewster how he would like to accompany 
the queen's envoy and thus see the Continent, 
should the opportunity come. How can we imagine 
anything else than that the young student would 
want to see the world ? What youth does not long 
to travel '^. 

William Brewster did not have to wait long ; for 
only two years later, when the lion-hearted Queen 
Elizabeth had agreed to help the Dutch in their war 
of independence against Spain, Davison was sent 
to the capital of the republic at The Hague, Then 
young Brewster took his first, but not his last, sea- 
voyage. Landing at Flushing, he saw this fortified 
town well garrisoned with Scottish, English, Irish, 
and Welsh, as well as Dutch troops. He beheld 
many wonderful sights while abroad, but what he 
learned was even more important for a man whom 
Providence was educating to be one of the founders 
of Massachusetts. The Dutch were then in advance 
of the world in initiating and working out many 
things which we associate with America, because 
we suppose them to have been invented on this 
side of the Atlantic. 



FREE CHURCHMEN IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 103 

Brewster saw seven states united in a single re- 
public, having a Congress or States-General and 
a commander-in-chief, who commanded the Union 
army and who was also governor of several of these 
states. Printing and the press were free, as they 
were not in England. Books and papers could be 
published with wonderful freedom. The poor were 
cared for far better than in Brewster's own countr)^ 
Hospitals, orphan asylums, and homes for the aged 
were very numerous. There was not only a great 
university with high schools and public common 
schools, but these were supported by public taxa- 
tion and in them the poor received instruction free. 
There was no persecution on account of religion, 
but Jews, Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, and Ana- 
baptists were tolerated and dwelt in peace together. 
Brewster learned a grood deal about federal Qrovern- 
ment. He was also powerfully influenced reli- 
giously by his patron, who was a Puritan. Having 
lived long among the Dutch, Davison had imbibed 
many of their ideas of religious freedom. He 
treated young Brewster more as a son than a ser- 
vant. When the Dutch government handed over 
the iron keys of the three cautionary towns, Davi- 
son transferred them to Brewster, and the young 
student slept with them under his pillow. Having 
concluded his business, carrying back to England 
about half a million dollars' worth of jewellery and 



104 ^^^ ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

silver plate, which the Dutch people had given up 
as security for the loan of English money, Davison 
was honored by the Congress with a gold chain, but 
this he put upon the neck of his page to wear. 

Coming back to merry England, Davison was 
made the queen's Secretary of State. William 
Brewster spent some time at the Court, seeing the 
queen and her gay lords and ladies. For a while 
it looked as if he had a brilliant political future be- 
fore him and might become a high officer of state, 
but as his fortune was linked with Davison's, and 
Davison's with that of Mary Queen of Scots, 
Brewster's political career soon ended. Under the 
discipline of Providence he became a Separatist, a 
Pilgrim, and one of the makers of America. When 
this unfortunate captive lady was executed by the 
queen's own orders, Elizabeth contrived to throw 
the blame upon Davison. His fortunes fell, and 
he found himself a prisoner and impoverished. 
In 1590 young William Brewster gave up all his 
dreams of court life and returned to Scrooby. Had 
the beautiful Scottish queen lived, or died long 
afterward in her bed, the story of New England 
mio;ht have been different. 

In his new home, his father being ill, Brewster 
carried on the duties of innkeeper and relay agent. 

On his father's death, in 1603, he was appointed 
"post." He had great influence in the neighbor- 



FREE CHURCHMEN IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 105 

hood, and succeeded in getting godly Puritan minis- 
ters in the pulpits. Soon he had gathered together 
those of like mind with himself to form a new 
church. Sometimes he would go with them over 
to Gainesborough, ten miles to the eastward, and 
there hear the kind of sermons which he enjoyed. 
A Puritan in morals, Brewster in church polity 
held to that doctrine of the Anabaptists or free 
churchmen which declared that Church and State 
should be kept apart, and that only those persons 
should be considered members of Christ's church 
and partakers of the communion who lived holy 
lives. By the year 1605, Brewster and his com- 
panions, among whom was William Bradford, who 
lived at Austerfield, a mile or two north in 
Yorkshire, invited the Rev. John Robinson, a 
Separatist, who had lived among the Dutch 
Anabaptists at Norwich, to come and be their 
minister. 

It could not now longr be concealed that these 
people, who worshipped frequently in the old 
Scrooby manor house, were Separatists, who had 
withdrawn from the national or political church. 
They were dubbed " Brownists " because Robert 
Browne of Norwich first tauoht in Enorlish the doc- 
trines of the " Anabaptists " or free churchmen. 
Driven from Norwich, where the Dutch Mennon- 
ites were numerous, Browne went to Middelburg 



I06 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

in Zealand, where they swarmed, where they first 
received toleration from William of Orange, and 
where printing was free. Browne's books were 
secretly circulated in England, though men caught 
sellino- them were burnt. 

o 



CHAPTER IX. 

IN THE LAND WHERE CONSCIENCE WAS FREE. 

OUT of the eater came forth meat" was Sam- 
son's riddle. It was like the bees makinor 
honey in the skeleton of the lion which the young 
Nazarite had slain, for the Separatists to form their 
church in the very meeting-house owned by their 
persecutor, the archbishop of York, who had politi- 
cal powers like a sheriff. The free churchmen 
make a clear distinction between a church and the 
edifice in which it meets, the one being made of 
souls and the other of stone, brick, or wood. In 
that wainscoted room of the Scrooby manor house, 
New England began. As some of the worshippers 
walked many miles to come to Scrooby, Brewster, 
who rented the grounds and building, often enter- 
tained them at his own charge. 

At last the bishop's spies and informers ferreted 
out these " Brownists." Being watched, as Brad- 
ford says, " they could not long continue in a peace- 
able condition, but were hunted and persecuted on 
every side. Some were taken and locked up in 
prison, others had their houses beset and watched 
night and day, and hardly escaped their hands ; and 

107 



I08 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the most were fain to fly and leave their houses and 
habitations and the means of their hvehhood." 

A few miles to the southwest of Scrooby village 
is the town of Worksop, where the writer's ancestors, 
the Eyres, lived, and further down in the same shire 
is Newark, where one of them, named Gervaise 
Eyre, commander of the kings castle during the 
Civil War, was slain. The Eyres and the Nevilles 
were kinsmen, and it was " Gervaise Nevyle " of 
Scrooby who was the first of the Separatist com- 
pany arrested by the bishop's spies and put into 
jail, on the charge of being a " Brownist." 

Bradford's record means that the company of 
men, women, and children, caring more for liberty 
of conscience than for comfort or even life, tried to 
get to the land where they knew that conscience 
was free. After walking over the muddy roads 
some miles southwestwardly to Boston in Lincoln- 
shire, they were betrayed by the treacherous Eng- 
lish captain, who was to carry them to Holland, and 
robbed and thrown into jail; but as the Boston 
magistrates were Puritans, they were soon released. 
It must have been a hard winter for them while 
waiting for another opportunity to escape; for the 
laws, which were very severe against them, as Sep- 
aratists from the political church, and which had 
been originally aimed against the Catholics, made 
it criminal to leave England without official license. 



LV rilE LAND WHERE CONSCIENCE WAS FREE. lOQ 

Nevertlieless, in the springtime, they engaged a 
Dutch captain to meet them on the sliore between 
Great Grimsby and Hull. Most of the males walked 
across the country, but the women and children 
with a few men took boats at Bawtry and dropped 
down the Trent. When the Zealander arrived 
with his ship, the women were seasick, the boats 
stranded, and the tide low. One boatful of the men 
had oot on board, when down the hill rushed a o-reat 
company of men on horse and foot with arms enough 
for a battle. To save himself and ship, the Dutch- 
man hoisted anchor and sails and left, getting into 
a great storm. For two weeks the poor landsmen 
were tossed on the sea, while those left on land 
were haled from one magistrate to another and 
finally released. At length, all got safely to Am- 
sterdam. 

Over a century and a half later, when illiterate 
English house-painters renovated the faded swing- 
ing signs of the wayside inns and, instead of " The 
League of Seven States," painted " The Leg and 
Seven Stars," and when the United States and 
Great Britain were at war, John Paul Jones, a regu- 
larly commissioned American naval officer, captured 
off the coast near the place of the Pilgrims' flight 
a brigantine named the Mayflower. 

The Scrooby refugees lived one year in Amster- 
dam, where there were other English congregations. 



no THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

They then went to Leyden for greater peace and 
comfort. In this fair and beautiful city, they were 
at first quite poor, but they held together in good 
fellowship. Being faithful and industrious, they 
were able in 1612 to buy a large lot of ground and 
build on it twenty-three small houses, and one large 
one for their minister. Their settlement was in 
Bell Alley, just across from St. Peter's church. 
Behind them was the British Presbyterian church. 
To their right was the French church, out of which 
came the Walloon Pilgrim Fathers, who settled 
New Netherland. To their left was the city com- 
mandery or garrison house where Miles Standish 
was probably on duty. The English Separatists 
lived midway between the Broadway with its City 
Hall and the Rapenburg canal, by the side of which 
was the University. 

Other people of like ways of thinking came from 
Great Britain and joined them, so that they soon 
numbered three hundred. During the years from 
1610 to 1620, during which they lived in this "fair 
and beautiful city of a sweet situation," as Bradford 
calls it, probably as many as eighty marriages were 
made between the men and women in the company. 
Possibly as many as a hundred children were born, 
who grew up to speak Dutch and to understand 
and like the ways of the people and country. Very 
probably some of these children attended the Dutch 



IN THE LAND WHERE CONSCIENCE WAS FREE. Ill 

free public schools. It is likely that every year 
they took part with the citizens of Leyden in the 
October Thanksgiving Day, when dehverance from 
the Spaniards was celebrated. This was done first 
by worship in the church, and then by eating a good 
dinner, in which the meal called "hotch-pot" — 
beef or mutton and vcQ-etables stewed together — 
was one of the chief attractions. Our " hodge- 
podge " is only a corruption of the Dutch " hotch- 
pot." The iron pot, left behind by the Spaniards 
when forced to retreat by the waters let in from the 
broken dikes, had been brought into Leyden by a 
Dutch boy named Gisbert Cornellissen. It was then 
and is still kept as a precious relic. The Dutch 
Thanksgiving Day, like ours, began as a festival of 
good cheer, gratitude, and worship. In time it de- 
generated into a mere holiday such as our own is 
fast becoming. 

Some of the Pilgrim men became citizens of the 
municipal republic of Leyden, and thus learned all 
about federal and republican government. Brews- 
ter, whom we remember to have been in the 
Netherlands before, set up, with the aid of his 
friend. Brewer, a printing press and printed books 
and pamphlets which they sent over to Scotland 
and England, just as Robert Browne had done. 
Indeed, this was the great hope, ever cherished 
by Robinson and his associates, that they would be 



1/ 



112 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

able from Holland, by means of free printing, to 
spread their principles of Independency in Great 
Britain. Had they been able to do this, they would 
probably never have come to America. 

King James considered these " Brownist " pam- 
phlets as incendiary documents. He peremptorily 
ordered his ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, at 
The Hague, to use every effort to get the Pilgrim 
Press in Choir Alley broken up: By lobbying in 
the Dutch Congress and manipulating the whole 
line of national, state, and city authorities, from the 
councilman to the stadholder, Carleton succeeded. 
The types were seized, and the printing office closed. 
This was an awful blow to the whole Pilgrim 
Company ; for they could no longer expect to in- 
fluence friends in England and thus bring about 
the better times which they died without seeing, 
but which we behold to-day. 

This failure of their missionary hopes was what 
first seriously turned the Pilgrim thoughts towards 
emigration, though Jesse de Forest was their next- 
door neighbor and they had already known of his 
plans and American enterprise. If they could not 
print their books and pamphlets, then they could 
not do very much toward converting Englishmen 
to their ideas ; so they began to inquire where 
they could go and help to make a better England. 
There were other things which disturbed their 



IN THE LAND WHERE CONSCIENCE IVAS FREE. II3 

peace of mind, and made them long for life else- 
where, with opportunity for spreading abroad their 
teachings. Above all other things, the Pilgrims de- 
sired to be missionaries and work out their ideas 
of church government and Christianity, without 
either aid or opposition from the state. 

Many of their sons, who liked Holland and what 
the Dutch were fighting for, enlisted in the Union 
army or navy. Or they went off to voyages, 
loving adventure and attracted by the prospect of 
gain. Others married Dutch girls and settled 
down in the country. Their daughters married 
Dutchmen, and so it seemed as though, if they 
stayed in Holland, they would soon lose their native 
language and be lost among the Dutch people. 
Being Puritans and country people, they did not 
approve of the free and joyous way in which the 
Dutch, who hated the late Jewish notions about 
the Sabbath, kept the Lord's Day. Then, too, 
the truce with Spain was to be over in 1621, and 
they might be involved in the sufferings and hor- 
rors of one of the cruellest of wars ; for the Span- 
iards were no better then in the Netherlands in 
putting down what they called a rebellion, than 
they are in suppressing one in Cuba. So these 
free churchmen began to talk seriously, and the 
youngsters to dream of the romance of American 
colonization. 



114 '^^^ ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

During the peace there was tremendous excite- 
ment, both rehgious and political, in the whole 
country and especially in Leyden. The Calvinists 
and the Arminians were quarrelling over theologi- 
cal questions. When these got into politics, they 
took the form of State Sovereignty as against the 
supremacy of the Federal Government, and of 
possible secession versus the Union. The two 
parties named Remonstrants and contra-Remon- 
strants were then arrayed in deadly enmity against 
each other. The Pilgrims were stanch Calvinists 
and Union men, but the great excitements through 
which they passed, not only during the Dutch 
troubles, but also in the attempts of King James 
and his ambassador. Sir Dudley Carleton, to destroy 
them, must have been powerfully educative and 
given them a tough moral fibre which fitted 
them to be the nobler builders of a commonwealth. 
Thus were Brewster, Bradford, Winslow, Carver, 
Allerton, and others trained in a free republic. 

As we have seen, the first application of the Ley- 
den Company was made to the New Netherland 
Trading Company, but before the answer of the 
National Government denying two ships of war for 
a convoy, offers had come from the Virginia Com- 
pany in England. One of its members, quite prob- 
ably Sir Edwin Sandys, brother of Brewster's old 
landlord at Scrooby, and one of the most liberal of 



IN THE LAND WHERE CONSCIENCE WAS FREE. I 15 

English statesmen, who opposed the bad king and 
the Spanish influence, lent the Leyden people three 
hundred pounds sterling without interest, for three 
years. This meant to these poor people a sum now 
equal to ten thousand dollars, in a time when there 
was not one bank in England, and when the rates 
of interest were like those in barbarous countries 
to-day, where men have to pay from thirty to sixty 
per cent. Later on, the Pilgrims actually borrowed 
money at " usury " ; that is, fift)' per cent interest. 

It was resolved that the youngest and the strong- 
est of the Leyden congregation should first go to 
New Netherland and start a colony. If Providence 
seemed to approve of their undertaking, then the 
others, including the middle-aged and the old, would 
come out also, if they could, — that is, if they were 
not hindered by their intolerant king and the big- 
oted people in the London Company, who hated 
" Brownists." How wonderful and exciting must 
have been the dreams of the Pilgrim lads and lassies 
from the day of decision ! 

It was on July 22, 1620, that the pioneer party 
left Delfshaven on the Maas River, fourteen miles 
south of Leyden, in the little ship Speedwell, reach- 
ing Southampton a few days later. There they 
met the larger vessel, the Mayflower, from London. 
For the first time many of the young folks looked 
upon old England. 



CHAPTER X. 

PLYMOUTH PLANTATION. 

THE Leyden church had sent one or two agents 
over to England to secure a ship and provisions 
and make agreement about work for the company, 
shares, payment, etc. Now they found that matters 
for the colony had been arranged in a very dis- 
tasteful way, and besides they had to sell off most 
of their butter and all their beer in order to pay 
their debts and clear the harbor. Even then they 
were poorly equipped. However, the two ships 
started. The Speedwell soon began to leak, and 
they had to put in at Dartmouth, and again at 
Plymouth, losing both time and money. After get- 
ting well into the Atlantic, the rascally captain of 
the Speedwell, who did not want to cross the ocean, 
declared she was unseaworthy. So, turning back to 
Plymouth, the weakest of the company were put on 
the Speedwell and sent back to London, while the 
strongest and bravest, numbering one hundred and 
two persons, started on the large ship for a voyage 
in the stormiest time of the year. 

When in mid-ocean the frame of the Mayflower 

ii6 



PL VMO U TH PLANT A TION. I I 7 

was SO strained by the chopping waves and the 
terrible winds, that one of the great supporting 
beams of the ship was drawn out of place. Then 
it seemed as though the vessel would go to pieces. 
Fortunately, one of the passengers had a piece of 
Dutch hardware on board, which had been invented 
some years before. This was called a domme- 
V kratcht, or, as we say, a " jack screw." By this, the 
stout beam was forced into place, and being held by 
an iron band and supported by a post, the ship was 
made safe again. Then they calked the seams and 
tried to keep dry and comfortable ; but shut up in 
the foul air by the horrible weather, and then after- 
wards much exposed to the raw winds and cold, it is 
not surprising that the seeds of quick consumption 
were planted in their constitutions. 

Expecting first to see Sandy Hook and to disem- 
bark near the Hudson River, the Pilgrims made land- 
fall at Cape Cod. Instead of a lovely land robed in 
the verdure and flowers of late summer or early 
autumn, they beheld leafless trees through which 
the chill winds of November roared and whistled, 
with pines and cedars. 

Yet pilot Coppin, who had been once across the 
Atlantic, had not made a mistake in his original 
reckoning, but something had carried the Mayjioiucr 
too far north, just as it had done Verrazano many 
years before. What was the mystery ? Coppin, and 



Il8 THE ROMANCE OE AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

many who like him mistook their course, could not 
then tell. Foolish people long afterward, with that 
shameful prejudice against the Dutch which so 
many Americans have inherited from Englishmen 
and their wars, like to think that the pilot of the 
Mayfloiver was " bribed by the Dutch." 

The truth is, that men did not know anything 
then about the Gulf Stream, which probably never , 
was understood until after the time of Benjamin X' 
Franklin, who was the first to study it philosophi- 
cally. This great blue stream of warm water flowing 
northward had disturbed Verrazano's, as it did Cop- 
pin's, calculations. The captain of the Mayjloiuer 
tried to sail southward around Cape Cod, but could 
not get the Mayflozucr through the rough waters, 
shoals, and quicksands. Thankful to escape ship- 
wreck, the Pilgrims gladly turned back and the 
Mayflozucr found anchorage off the point where 
Provincetown now lies. Here, in the summer of 
1897, was unveiled a monument in honor of this 
historic ship and her heroic passengers. 

It was a mixed company on board the Mayfloiver. 
In the first place, there were rough sailors ; some of 
them were very profane and heartless. The captain 
and mates did not care to remain one day longer 
than necessary on this side of the Atlantic, and they 
gave their passengers hints that they must soon get 
ashore. Then, the colonists had expected to settle 



PLYMOUTH PLANTATION. II9 

in New Netherland or within the Hmits claimed by 
the London Virginia Company, but had been com- 
pelled by the Gulf Stream, or by Providence, to 
settle in these northern regions of the Plymouth 
Company, for which they had no patent. They 
were, therefore, without any authority or means of 
government. Some of the uncertain characters on 
board, who were rather free with their tongues, were 
already giving out that when on land they were 
going to do pretty much as they pleased. Perhaps 
the every-day morality of the Pilgrim Company was 
a little too severe for them. 

It was necessary to agree upon some form of 
government. So in the cabin of the little ship the 
leaders met together and in the name of God and 
as loyal subjects of the superstitious monarch that 
hated them, and whom they called the " King of 
France," as well as of Great Britain and Ireland, 
and even nominated "the defender of the faith," 
they covenanted and combined themselves together 
into a civil body politic. They promised all due 
submission and obedience to such laws and offices 
as should be enacted. To this document, probably 
laid upon the lid of a chest, forty-one names out of 
the sixty-five adult passengers then on the ship 
were signed. Governor Carver was made head of 
the colony. This compact, since copied in bronze 
and cut in stone and made the theme of poetry and 



120 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

oratory, was the natural result of the provisions 
already made by the company in London. 

Several weeks were spent in exploring the coun- 
try by sending out parties on land and over the 
waters in the shallop. Among the adventures were 
the findino: of corn, the remains of an old fort, the 
graves of two Europeans, and many evidences of 
the Indians, such as deer traps, deserted wigwams, 
trails, and old maize fields. They had one skirmish 
with the Indians, in which no one was hurt. One 
party spent a Sunday on Clark's Island. 

One of the first things done was by the women, 
who went ashore to wash clothes. Men and boys 
helped them to build fires, with sweet-smelling 
juniper or cedar wood, and to bring fresh water 
from a spring on the beach. Thus was begun the 
great American Monday wash-day. 

It was not until the 21st of December, in the 
stormy weather, that they landed and began their 
settlement at what Captain John Smith had already 
named Plymouth. Here were a brook of fresh 
water, cultivated land, and a fairly good site for a 
town, with a hill near by for a fort, just as at Ley- 
den. On the shore lay a boulder, one of the very 
few large stones anywhere in the neighborhood, 
which had taken a ride on some prehistoric glacier 
or iceberor and had thus been carried down from 
regions farther north in Canada. This they made 



PLYMOUTH PLANTATION. I 21 

their first wharf or landing-place, the tradition be- 
ing that Mary Allerton was the first woman who 
stepped upon it. 

The men went daily to and from the ship, in the 
wet and stormy weather, occasionally remaining sev- 
eral days and nights on land, but every day working 
hard, putting up log houses and covering them 
with thatch. As in all new colonies, there were 
great dangers from fire, for evidently these people 
were not accustomed to build houses and to make 
good chimneys ; but though the roofs were several 
times burnt off, the log walls remained unhurt. 
The settlement at Plymouth was a good deal like 
that in Leyden, with houses in rows, with one wide 
street between, and the hill fort, in which they 
mounted their four little cannon. Their food was 
rather poor, but they managed to vary it with a few 
wild ducks and geese. The provisions and stores 
were landed and put under shelter, late in January, 
by which time they had roofed the Common House, 
which was at once filled with the sick and dying. 
It was not until late in February that their fort was 
in sufficiently good order to be considered capable 
of withstanding an attack. No human being of 
the country visited them, until the-middle of March, 

By this time contagious consumption had broken 
out, which quickly carried off whole families and 
diminished their number nearly one-half; so that 



122 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

only a few able-bodied men were left. Neverthe- 
less, when the Mayjloiver went away, not one of the 
colonists returned in her. Even the ship became a 
pest-house ; for many of the sailors that were living 
in the germ-infested quarters of the late passengers 
sickened and died. With such brutal and profane 
sailors in a floating coffin, it is no wonder that the 
Pilgrims, even if any of them had a longing to run 
the risk of imprisonment and death at the hands 
of their country's rulers, preferred to trust in God 
and stay on the bleak shores of Massachusetts. 

The coast of Maine was at this time much re- 
sorted to by European fishing vessels, and Boston 
harbor and the region of Cape Cod were among the 
most frequently visited portions of the American 
coast-line. The French and the Dutch, having 
made explorations and mapped the country, often 
paid visits. English kidnappers and slave-traders 
were also frequent and dangerous. They seized the 
Indians and sold them as laborers and galley slaves 
to Spain. Such acts made the Indians very hostile 
to white men. No red men lived near Plymouth, 
for a great plague had broken out a few years 
before, so that no natives disputed ownership of 
the soil. Indeed, both Pilgrims and Puritans, for 
the most part, took it for granted that all the land 
belonged to King James, and to themselves as 
representing him. 



PLYMOUTH PLANTATION. 123 

It was on the sixteenth day of March, 1621, a few 
days before the whole company finally came ashore, 
that the first native American, tall and straight, 
without moustaches or whiskers, and almost naked, 
except for a little fringed leather around his waist, 
suddenly appeared in Leyden street. He held in 
one hand a bow and in the other two arrows. Open- 
ing his mouth, he said " Welcome." This was Sam- 
oset, who became the interpreter and friend of the 
colonists ; for he had learned some English when on 
board Captain Dermer's ship. He was first served 
with food and drink, greatly enjoying his European 
refreshments. Then he told his story and the his- 
tory of the place. 

Samoset returned to Plymouth a few days later, 
with five other tall and sturdy savages partly dressed 
in deer and panther fur. As Gypsies were the only 
dark-skinned men the Pilgrims had seen, and Irish 
hose the only garments for the legs reaching from 
the ankles to the waist, — for the Pilgrims wore 
knickerbockers or knee-breeches and stockinors, — 
they thought the Indians looked like Gypsies and 
wore Irish trousers. 

Other visits were from an Indian named Squanto, 
who had been in London, and from Massasoit and 
his warriors. These were entertained at Plymouth, 
and thus friendly relations began. The Indians 
helped the white men and taught them many use- 



124 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

fill things, especially in the matter of getting food. 
These Europeans had probably never seen corn 
before and did not understand its cultivation, 
Squanto showed them how to catch the fish called 
alewives and to plant corn in hills, putting a fish 
with the seed so as to manure the soil, which was 
sandy and poor. He also gave them an object- 
lesson by going down to the shore and with his 
feet pressing out the eels, and in some cases catch- 
inij fish without hook or net. In various other 
ways, friendly Indians were very helpful. These 
emigrants did not know the American climate ; 
for they planted some of their best seeds in the soil 
in February, because the weather seemed to be 
warm. In this they were at least two or three 
months ahead of time. 

When autumn was at hand. Governor John Car- 
ver was dead, and William Bradford had succeeded. 
The crops had been gathered. Long accustomed 
to Thanksgiving days in Leyden, they determined 
to have one of their own. So Governor Bradford 
sent out four or five lusty young fellows with their 
firelocks, and the wild turkey being abundant and 
game fat, enough birds were shot to furnish the 
colonists for nearly a week. The Indians, being 
more expert in shooting and trapping deer, provided 
the venison. Both natives and new-comers enjoyed 
several days of sport and feasting, though praise to 



PLYMOUTH PLANTATION. 1 25 

God was not forootten. The white musketeers and 
the red archers shot at a mark and sat side by side 
along the boards spread with well-cooked game and 
savory dishes which the wives and maidens of the 
Pilgrims provided. Thus was begun what has 
grown to be our national Thanksgiving Day. 

Amid the rigors of the climate, homesickness, 
rough work and hardships of the new life, and the 
difficulty of getting enough food, these pioneers 
failed in fiesh and color. The survivors of the 
original Mayjioivcr company must have seemed an 
emaciated and shabbily dressed lot of people, 
when the Anne and Little James, the next ships of 
the Pilgrim fleet, came in. Indeed, the first two or 
three years were those of severe struggle against 
famine, hostile Indians, rattlesnakes, mosquitoes, 
seventeen-year locusts, and various other troubles. 
As the years went on, however, the splendid faith, 
the unfailing courage, and the unremitting industry 
of these brave men and women had their reward. 
Harvests improved, more land was won to the plough, 
cattle were imported, and new colonists joined 
them. 

Between 1620 and 1630 about three hundred 
emigrants, all told, came to Plymouth, bringing 
colonists from Holland and from England. Most 
of these were honest, industrious, sober, and law- 
abiding people. Nevertheless, the bigoted party 



126 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

among the London Adventurers prevented John 
Robinson from coming over and in other ways 
troubled the Plymouth people, because they were 
Independents in church government. The Advent- 
urers even tried to force ministers of the political 
church of England upon these free churchmen, but 
in this they did not succeed. In 1626 the Plym- 
outh leaders bought out the share of the London 
Company, and in a few years owned all their own 
habitations and stock. When they learned from 
the Dutch the art of using wampum or Indian shell- 
money, trade with the red men mightily improved 
and they became quite comfortably settled, with a 
reasonable share of this world's goods. 

Their former neighbors in Leyden, the Walloons 
and Dutch, now livinQ- on Manhattan Island, wished 
to open neighborly communication, and in 1627 sent 
their secretary, Isaac de Rasieres, to Plymouth. 
He came, bringing his trumpeter and several com- 
panions, besides cloth, sugar, and other things which 
the Pilgrims wanted and which they paid for in 
other commodities, including tobacco. Best of all, 
in this visit they learned the valuable secret of 
Indian currency, by which they were enabled to 
open fresh markets at a much greater profit. Those 
Indians east of the Hudson River and north of Long 
Island Sound were Algonquins, speaking a different 
language from the Iroquois. The Five Nations oc- 



PLYMOUTH PLANTATION. 12/ 

cupying New Netherland were a more highly civil- 
ized body of men. These used tokens or pieces 
of shells drilled, polished, and strung together, for 
money in trade and also for the making of his- 
torical documents to assist their memory. At first, 
the eastern Indians, not accustomed to wampum, 
did not take it up very rapidly, but before long the 
Pilgrims could not get enough of it. Just as 
tobacco in Virginia gave settled prosperity, so, from 
about the time of their use of wampum, the Plym- 
outh men had no further anxiety about food or 
income. 

The greatest of their troubles arose from the 
presence of various bad characters " shuffled in " 
among them, as Bradford says. From time to time 
English kidnappers and slave-traders, treacherous 
redskins and bad men, like Morton of Merrymount, 
gave much anxiety to the godly colonists. But 
Bradford's wisdom and firmness, Standish's alert- 
ness and courage, Winslow's diplomacy and skill in 
dealing with all sorts of men, and John Alden's 
faithful service made a combination of talents that 
extricated the colony out of all difficulties and 
secured a success that impressed the world. 

In their history of life in and flight from Eng- 
land, their eleven years' mellowing and tempering 
in the Dutch republic, and in their demonstration 
that men from different countries and of various 



128 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

shades of religious belief could live together in peace, 
Plymouth colony was a type of the United States. 
In this cosmopolitan company were representa- 
tives of at least seven nations, — English, Scottish, 
Welsh, Irish, French, Walloon, and Dutch, — while 
among them were rigid Anglicans, stern Puritans, 
bold radicals like Roger Williams, Roman Catholics 
like Miles Standish, and men of other beliefs from 
differing religious communities. Yet the Pilgrims, 
though lofty in morals, were sweet in temper, toler- 
ant to various faiths, and withal full of common 
sense. Considering all things, they showed grandly 
how Christian men could live in harmony when 
united in great principles. 

To most readers the poetic side is also the his- 
toric side of Plymouth Plantation. It appears in 
Longfellow's picture-poem of " The Courtship of 
Miles Standish," which George H. Boughton has 
reproduced on his glowing canvases. Happy the 
Pilgrim fathers and mothers and happy their de- 
scendants, that they escaped the caricaturist before 
tradition had set and history had revealed the full 
truth concerning all of our forefathers. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS. 

NOTHING succeeds like success." It is mas- 
terful precedents that move men to dare and 
do. More than anything else it was the fact that 
the Pilgrims had established Plymouth colony in 
prosperity, that led a great Puritan migration from 
England and colonies from Scotland, which settled 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, and Rhode Island, with people from 
the four nations of the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland, among whom also were Dutch- 
men, Huguenots, Germans, and other nationalities. 
In the English home land, the condition of the 
Puritans was becoming daily more intolerable. 
James Stuart seemed to be falling into bottomless 
bigotry and Archbishop Laud, his minion, who was 
very much the same kind of a fanatic that may be 
found in Mohammedan countries, was filling the 
English jails with Christians who would not con- 
form to the political church. The Scottish people 
seemed able to resist the machinations of King 
James, who said that he would compel all his sub- 

129 



130 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

jects to conform or else harry them out of the 
country. In England the elements were gathering 
for the great civil war which was to divide England 
into hostile camps and bring a law-defying monarch 
to the block. This, however, Charles I. little 
anticipated when he became king in 1635. Ignor- 
ing Parliament and trampling on the constitution, 
he tried to rule the country with the aid of such 
creatures as Laud. 

Besides political and church troubles, there was 
also much aoricultural and commercial distress. 
These things conspired to make Englishmen will- 
ing to leave their own country, and try their fortunes 
where the fisheries were so rich, furs so abundant, 
trade promising, agriculture excellent, gold to be 
found, and silk possibly to be made. Societies 
were formed for the purpose of promoting emigra- 
tion to America. In 1626 Roger Conant and the 
" Old Planters" began the settlement of Salem. In 
1628 another company of Puritans, two hundred or 
more, led by John Endicott of Dorchester, crossed 
the ocean, hoping to find rest from persecution. 
They landed on the north or " Puritan Shore," of 
Boston Bay, and Salem soon became a thriving place. 
The old wooden meeting-house of 1634 is still kept 
in this city, which is now the Mecca of the antiqua- 
rian and lover of history, and in which Hawthorne 
began writing: those classic romances of Puritan 



THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS. 131 

life, including "The Scarlet Letter" and "The 
House of the Seven Gables." 

These people of the " Bay Colony " did not at 
first separate from the church of England. They 
were Puritans of the sternest type, not having the 
spirit of toleration like the Pilgrims, who had dwelt 
twelve years in a country where conscience was 
free. Indeed, Endicott hated the very idea of 
religious liberty. He cut the cross out of the 
English flag, because he thought it savored of 
Romanism. 

When Charles I. kept on in his tyrannical course, 
the whole of the London Company determined to 
move in a body over the ocean and take themselves, 
their charter, and their government to America. 
Thus a great host of emigrants led by John 
Winthrop, who was appointed governor of Mas- 
sachusetts, came in a fleet of eleven vessels, on 
board of which were seven hundred settlers, with 
horses, cattle, tools, clothes, and other abundant 
equipment for maintaining a colony. These people 
were not poor like the Pilgrims. Most of them 
were wealthy, and many of them highly educated, 
and of excellent social and intellectual culture. 
They arrived not in the depth of winter, but in the 
height of summer, when strawberries were ripe and 
flowers fragrant and abundant. Everything seemed 
lovely and well calculated to give cheering first im- 



132 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

pressions. The ships named the Talbot, the George, 
the Lioiis Whelp, the Fo2ir Sisters, and the May- 
Jlower were ah large and fine craft, some of three 
hundred tons' burthen. They were well loaded 
with supplies of fully made suits of clothing, seeds, 
grain, wine, fishing nets, and fowling-pieces. Mili- 
tary equipments, such as drums, flags, spears, plenty 
of powder and shot, were not forgotten; for not a few 
of these Puritans had been soldiers in the Dutch 
wars. Among the colonists were skilled farmers, 
gardeners, men who could make pitch and salt, iron- 
workers, surgeons, barbers, prospectors for minerals, 
engineers, and surveyors. 

Not liking Salem, Winthrop settled at Charles- 
town, where at first, on account of the poor water, 
there was a great deal of sickness, but right across 
the bay there was an inviting piece of land. This 
was shaped like a lily, with a long narrow stem 
o^oing; back to the mainland. On this Q-round were 
three hills. The Indians named the place Shawmut, 
which probably means the place near the neck, re- 
ferring to the peninsula, though some connect its 
meaning with water. The English called the place 
Tri-Mountain, which has since become Tremont. 
They soon erected a beacon on the highest hill to 
guide the ships coming in the harbor. Hence the 
name Beacon Hill, and Beacon Street. There was 
plenty of good fresh water at Shawmut, and an 



THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS. 133 

English hermit named Blackstone hved here, who 
invited Winthrop and his fellow-Puritans to come 
over and make the place their home. They did so, 
and the settlement was soon afterward named 
Boston, after the old St. Botolph's town on the 
Witham, in Eno^land. 

This Puritan emigration, on so large a scale, gave 
to Massachusetts an advantage which no other of 
the colonies possessed, or was to possess ; that is, the 
early settlement of a very large number of fairly 
well-to-do and intelligent people of one race, lan- 
guage, and general way of thinking, within a small 
space of territory. By this providential concurrence 
of forces, tremendous and enduring moral and intel- 
lectual influences were generated which have borne 
rich fruit in our nation. 

In England, it seemed to some that the country 
would be depopulated if the rage of emigration con- 
tinued. Probably as many as twenty thousand 
English emigrants came over before 1640. In the 
fifteen years from 1630 to the breaking out of the 
Civil War in 1645, n^ore people came from Old to 
New England than afterwards came between 1645 
and 1775. Among the highly educated people were 
between eighty and one hundred clergymen, gradu- 
ates mostly of Cambridge. Often it happened that 
those on board the ships lying in the Fleet River, 
before going out in the Thames, had friends or 



134 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION.. 

kinsmen in the Fleet prison, put tliere for con- 
science' sake. At last the government interfered "to 
restrain the disorderly transporting of his Majesty's 
subjects . . . whose only or principal end is to live 
beyond the reach of authority." Next day an order 
appeared to stay eight ships then in the Thames, 
and their passengers were compelled to disembark. 
Amono- those who started to sail for Massachusetts, 
but had to get off ship, was Oliver Cromwell. The 
Puritans in America very early in their history be- 
came Separatists from the Anglican Establishment. 
Largely because of the direct influence of the Pil- 
grims, they became Independents in religion like 
the Plymouth men, but, unlike the latter, they united 
Church and State. 

There was very little of real democracy in the 
Bay Colony, but much of aristocracy; for only church 
members had a right to vote. In theory, all public 
matters were discussed and voted on in town meet- 
ing, that is, a town meeting of the church members, 
or Puritans. These Puritans could not tolerate the 
men of other ways of thinking, like the Quakers 
and the Baptists who came among them, whom 
they beat, branded, or hanged. They even dubbed 
the Plymouth colonists " Brownists " or " Anabap- 
tists," and looked with more or less contempt upon 
them. Both in Holland and America, the Pilgrim 
Fathers were better treated by the Dutch than by 



THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS. 135 

the Puritans. Toleration is a virtue which Ameri- 
cans have not learned from England, or from the 
Puritans of New England. For the origins of the 
religious liberty which we enjoy, we must look to 
the Anabaptists, William the Silent, and the Dutch 
republic. 

The concentration of most of the people near the 
seacoast was partly a necessity and partly for 
advantage. The soil not being especially fertile, 
laro^e farms like those in Viro-inia were unknown. 
Many of the people had come chiefly for the 
purpose of fishing. Shipbuilding and commerce 
soon flourished. The Blessing of the Bay was 
launched in 1630. Quite early in the history of the 
colony, large fleets, with thousands of men, found 
employment and wealth in the Newfoundland fish- 
eries. The codfish became a symbol of the new 
riches, giving its name to the aristocracy whose 
fathers had drawn treasures out of the sea. A 
golden codfish hangs to-day, as the emblem of 
colonial wealth, in the halls of the legislature of 
Massachusetts, which was then and is still called 
the General Court. 

It was quite common to see shipyards and farms 
alternating along the seacoast, and even to see ship- 
building going on in front of a farm, between the 
crops and the blue water. Prepared lumber, in the 
form of staves for barrels, were sent over to the old 



136 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

country. American-built ships were sold in Europe. 
Friday food was supplied to the southern nations. 
When commerce was opened with the West Indies, 
sugar and molasses were abundantly imported. The 
frequency of candy stores was early noted, while 
New England rum, made from the juice of sugar- 
cane, became a common drink, that was enjoyed by 
all, from the parson to the day laborers. Too free 
indulgence in the extract of molasses led to many 
scandals and furnished the stocks with many a vic- 
tim. Not a little trade was done in slaves. One of 
the industries was the making of manacles for the 
supply of the African man-stealers and traders in 
human flesh. 

The intolerant ideas which the Puritans brought 
with them and which were common to almost all 
countries in Europe, except Holland, soon had its 
legitimate results. The Puritans were not only 
very rigid in their ideas of possessing the earth so 
as to expel all intruders who did not agree with 
them, but they also ignored all claims of the Indians 
to the soil. They believed their land tenure was 
from the Almighty, through King James. In 1631 
RoQ^er Williams arrived at Nantasket. He was a 
radical who claimed that no one should be bound 
to maintain worship against his own consent, and 
that the land belonged to the Indians and they 
ought to be paid for it. 



THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS. 1 37 

These were ideas which lay at the basis of the 
Dutch repubhc and their colony in New Nether- 
land, but such free utterances seemed very danger- 
ous. Fearing that King James might take away 
their charter and otherwise molest them, the Mas- 
sachusetts Bay Colony ordered Williams to leave 
the colony. He found refuge for a little while in 
Plymouth. There, Bradford and other men of like 
spirit greatly enjoyed his preaching, despite his 
radical notions, for Roger Williams, take him all 
in all, was a very lovely character, a true Christian 
with little stiffness or formality in his ways, and of 
a winsome character. 

Travelling through the snow of winter, Williams 
went among the Indians, who welcomed him, while 
he learned their language. In the springtime he 
reached Narragansett Bay, the region which the 
Dutch had already named Rood Eilandt (Red 
Island), which has since become Rhode Island. 
Five friends joined him and they built a shelter on 
the Seekonk River. But the Plymouth men, who 
in some respects were as greedy of land as the 
Puritans, and respected neither Dutch nor Indian 
claims, notified him that the region he had chosen 
was under their control and intimated that he must 
move on. So, getting into their canoe, these apos- 
tles of " soul liberty " dropped down the river and 
coming in front of the flat ledge of rock, which is 



138 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

now at the foot of Powers Street in the city of 
Providence, they heard the Indians call out two 
words, learned from the English, "What cheer!" 
Thus welcomed and led by the first dwellers on the 
soil, Williams and his friends found a hill and a 
spring of excellent water. There they began a 
settlement, named, in gratitude to God, Providence, 
which has become the second city of the Eastern 
states. 

It was not long before others joined Roger Will- 
iams ; and the colony of Providence soon became a 
place very agreeable to those seeking " permission 
of differing consciences," for here men were awarded 
the same liberty as in the Dutch republic. Protes- 
tants of all sorts. Catholics, Jews, Agnostics, and 
Secularists were protected, just as in the land be- 
hind the dikes. This, the less liberal-minded peo- 
ple on both sides of the Atlantic could so little 
understand, that, just as they had called Holland 
and Amsterdam all kinds of opprobrious names and 
the Pilgrims " Brownists," because of the liberty of 
conscience granted, so they dubbed Rhode Island 
" The Land of Crooked Sticks." This was because 
there were, along with many persons of excellent 
character, some odd and strange specimens of hu- 
man nature. Yet, although Roger Williams is 
called the founder of soul liberty, he did nothing- 
more than expand and put in practice ideas which 




WHAT CHEER?' 



THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS. 139 

he had already learned from the people of the re- 
public, with whose history he, like Lord Baltimore, 
was well acquainted, and with whose language he, 
like William Penn, was so familiar. 

The next person to come into contact with colo- 
nial intolerance was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a pure 
woman of much intellectual power. She attacked 
especially the formalism and what she thought to 
be the hypocrisy of the clergymen, whose stiff and 
precise ways she evidently did not like. For such 
a character as she, who preached and taught her 
ideas very vigorously, there was then no room in 
Massachusetts. The General Court, after decidino; 
that Mrs. Hutchinson was "like Roofer Williams or 
worse," banished her. With others in sympathy 
with her, she left for the south, where, in 1638, with 
William Coddington they bought Rhode Island 
from the Indians and began the colonies of Ports- 
mouth and Newport, which were later followed by 
that of Warwick. This ladv, the mother of fifteen 
children, left Rhode Island in 1642 and settled in 
New Netherland. There she and her family were 
slain by the Indians. 

Roger Williams was too much of a Christian 
to nurse any grudge against his persecutors, and 
he gave them a splendid object-lesson in prac- 
tical Christianity. When the Pequot Indians in 
eastern Connecticut not only plotted to destroy the 



140 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

white men who had settled near them, but also in- 
trigued with the Narrao^ansetts to attack Boston 
and the surrounding towns, Williams' influence in 
this tribe was so great that he was able to dissuade 
them from taking the war-path and thus to save the 
Bay Colony from grave peril. 

By 1644 the colonists had greatly increased in 
the region of Providence and Newport, and liberal 
ideas and rulers being then in authority, Williams 
went to England and secured a charter which gave 
the people the right to frame a government accord- 
ing to their own ideas, provided they were loyal to 
the supreme authority in England, under which the 
united colonies formed a province called Rhode 
Island. This charter was later confirmed and re- 
mained the constitution, even until the year 1842. 

Rhode Island, more than any other colony or 
state, partly because of her small size, but primarily 
because of her founder, carried out most consist- 
ently and steadily the idea of absolute religious 
freedom. Here in the Western world, the Hebrews 
first found welcome, peace, and prosperity. 

The very flower of English Puritanism having 
left England and settled in Massachusetts, it was 
natural that so many people of education, among 
whom there were hundreds of men who had trav- 
elled in the Netherlands, and had seen the free 
common schools in that country, should be earnest 



THE GREAT PURITAX EXODUS. 141 

for popular as well as the higher education. As 
early as 1635, it was resolved to establish a public 
school in Boston. This was two years later than 
the school founded on Manhattan Island, which 
is still in existence. In 1S36 the General Court 
voted four hundred pounds, or what would now 
be equal to about four thousand dollars, to found 
at Newton, or later Cambridge, what is now Har- 
vard University. When, in 1638, the Rev. John 
Harvard left his library and about three thousand 
dollars to the colleoe, it was named after him. 
To the maintenance of this magnificent institu- 
tion — magnificent in its origin, as well as in this 
time of world-wide fame — the New England peo- 
ple always contributed their generous support. 

Printing presses and type were brought over 
from Holland, and books, many of which are now 
famous in history, were printed on the college 
press. Other private and public libraries, increas- 
ing with that of Harvard, have brought together 
in eastern Massachusetts the largest collections of 
books on this continent. It is no wonder that 
about nine-tenths of the writers of American his- 
tory have done most of their work within a cir- 
cuit of ten miles from the Massachusetts State 
House, and that American history, as thus far 
written and popularly read and believed, is rather 
a history of New England, with some notices of 



142 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

parts adjacent and beyond, than of the whole 
United States of America, and of the people and 
forces which united to make our country. 

Like that of the Swedish and German nations, 
the Dutch Calvinists, the Catholics of Maryland, 
and the Pilgrims of New Plymouth, one great 
idea of the Puritans in founding Harvard Col- 
lege was to convert the Indians to Christianity. 
Following the good example of the Lutheran 
Fabricius in Delaware, and of Domine Megapo- 
lensis, the Rev. John Eliot, in Massachusetts, began 
studying Algonquin, and was soon able to preach 
in that tongue. He gave his hearers long ser- 
mons, which were probably no longer than the 
harangues of their sachems, but he encouraged 
them, the braves with tobacco, and the squaws 
with apples. Eliot even translated the Bible, 
which few persons now can read; for in the Indian, 
as in all languages except dead ones, words be- 
come obsolete, because human speech is a living 
growth. 

Probably as many as a hundred Indian words 
have become part of our English tongue. Not 
only are " tomahawk," " moccasin," " caucus," and 
" mugwump " familiar to us, but so, also, are 
many names of famous chiefs and tribes. Our 
mountains and our rivers still reecho their sono- 
rous aboriginal Indian names, while most of our 



THE GREAT PURITA.V EXODUS. I43 

local poetic legends and American mythology 
have descended to us from the red men. We 
are " debtors not only to the Greeks, but to the 
barbarians," not only to old and new Europeans, 
but also to the primitive Americans. 

Among the other great gifts of the red men 
to civilization, which have mightily helped in the 
development of this continent and the white race, 
are, their skill in getting food out of the sea and 
soil, by hand, trap, or craft ; their great trails and 
paths ; their methods of agriculture ; their articles 
of vegetable food, such as succotash, pumpkins, 
and corn ; their medicines and remedies, ginseng, 
various roots and products of the forest ; the 
moccasin, the snowshoe, the birch-bark canoe, — 
all of them most valuable means of exploration, 
trade, and communication. The political proced- 
ure of the Indians must certainly have informed 
and stimulated our fathers ; for the caucus, the 
confederacy, and other ideas learned from the 
senators of the forest have become part of our 
own. The friendship of the Iroquois confederacy, 
first of five and then of six nations, which rose like 
a dike, impregnable to all assaults of French craft 
or force, bribery or subtlety, was one of the great 
decisive elements for winning this continent to 
Germanic civilization or, as we like to say, to 
Anglo-Saxon ideas. 



144 ^^^^ ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONTZATION. 

In all their education, however, the Puritans 
did not easily learn the lesson of tolerance ; for the 
Bay Colony was mostly under the rule of the 
clergy. Lawyers were next to unknown, and physi- 
cians as yet had scarcely any social standing. It 
was not until the time of Cromwell that even 
surgeons began to have an official position in the 
army. When the people called Quakers arose in 
1656, it seemed to the Puritans as if the Anabap- 
tists had come to life again. Two Quaker women, 
on landing in Boston, were at once clapped into 
jail and their books burnt, while they were sent 
back by the first returning ship. Nevertheless, 
days of fasting and prayer that were called failed 
to bar them out, and the Friends kept on coming. 
The trouble was, that some of these Quakers were 
rather violent in their behavior. They seemed 
to be a little better than anarchists. They would 
not use the ceremonies of society or uncover their 
heads before the magistrates, and in those days 
when pomp and ceremony were considered almost 
a part of religion, this seemed to be an insult to 
authority itself. The Friends would not take oath 
in a court of justice, but literally obeyed the com- 
mand of Christ as to yea and nay. They would 
not pay taxes to support the state church, which 
was Congregational in form, nor would they enter 
military service or bear arms in their own defence. 



THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS. 145 

William Penn had not one musket among all his 
Quaker colonists. 

As in many controversies to-day, the root of the 
trouble lay in the question as to the seat of authority. 
Where was it } In the church, or in the Bible, or 
in one's own conscience } This question has been 
settled by the American people so far as to declare 
that it is not the business of the state to decide ; for 
they who obey the laws of the United States can 
answer the question as they please. 

In those days also, when insanity was not well 
understood, lunatics, instead of being kindly and 
carefully treated, with comforts and moral suasion 
and the application of no more force than was 
necessary, were served in a way that now seems to 
us cruel and even brutal. The Quakers who ran 
naked through the streets, or interrupted the meet- 
ings, or loudly called the clergymen hypocrites and 
deceivers were publicly whipped, put in the stocks, 
maimed, branded with red-hot irons, had their ears 
cut off, or were exiled. Finally, four of them were 
hanged on Boston Common, one of them being a 
woman. When the king interfered, the punish- 
ments and the excitement died out. 

In those colonies where abundant freedom was 
granted, the people had little or no trouble with the 
Quakers, so called. At Plymouth, the Friends 
would probably have met with no opposition had 



146 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

they come while the original settlers were still alive. 
It was noticeable, however, that the second genera- 
tion of people born in the new and rough lands, 
who had never known either the manly outdoor 
sports of Merry England or the noble toleration 
of Holland, and who were influenced by Puritan 
notions, were much harsher and severer than their 
fathers. Even in Plymouth the Quakers were 
whipped and the man who harbored or defended 
them was suspected and apt to suffer. Laws were 
even made denouncing death to the Quakers, but 
happily they were not enforced. Throughout their 
history the Pilgrims always set the Puritans a noble 
example of Christianity, charity, and liberal-minded- 
ness. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, AND NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

NO one can ever accuse the Puritans, or the aver- 
age Englishman, of a lack of courage. The 
love of war inherited from their Teutonic and Kel- 
tic ancestors, and the power to fight with bull-dog 
tenacity, still remains. After the sachem Massasoit 
had died, his younger son Metacom, ridiculously 
called " King " Philip, formed a league of the sav- 
ages, and in 1675 suddenly attacked the Massachu- 
setts towns. 

A war, lasting two years, broke out, which wiped 
out thirteen towns and resulted in a loss of life 
probably amounting to six hundred colonists. Dur- 
ing all this crisis, Eliot's Christian Indians remained 
faithful to the whites. After his tribe had been 
nearly annihilated, Metacom was shot at Mount 
Hope, near Bristol, Rhode Island, by a party under 
Captain Benjamin Church. The chief's head was 
exposed in true European fashion on the palisades 
at Plymouth, where in time a pair of wrens made 
their nest inside the skull. 

The Indian prisoners were sold as slaves among 

147 



148 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the Spanish possessions of South America and the 
West Indies. Against this un-Christian poHcy of 
revenge, some of the clergymen protested in vain. 
The annals of the Eastern states are fearfully dis- 
figured by the harsh treatment of Indians by Chris- 
tians. The policy of Roger Williams, Arendt Van 
Curler, William Penn, and the Moravians was not 
the policy of these cultured Puritans, who seemed 
to be far more familiar with the Old than with the 
New Testament, and who followed the precepts of 
Joshua and Gideon rather than those of Christ. 

With all their Christianity and their civilization, 
the settlers of the Eastern states were men who in- 
herited the traits and superstitions which had come 
down from their Germanic ancestors, and these 
they brought with them to America. They were 
led astray by their inbred delusions, just as we have 
seen the Spaniards were by theirs. 

Witchcraft is not the curse of any one age or 
nation, but exists all over the world to-day, wher- 
ever old paganism still holds the human mind in 
slavery, and it lingers even in countries called 
civilized. The first voices in modern times against 
it were raised in the Dutch republic, by men who 
had critically examined the delusion and the alleged 
manifestations of it; so that by the time the Pilgrims 
reached Leyden, it had ceased to trouble the minds 
of most intelligent people. Educated men in Hoi- 



CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW IIAMrSHIRE. 1 49 

land everywhere scouted the idea that the devil, or 
evil spirits of any kind, had any direct dealings with 
or influence upon the human body, though some 
clergymen and their adherents still nursed the 
horrible superstition which they tried to bolster up 
by quoting the Bible. In 1690 Rev. Balthazar 
Bekker wrote the book which helped to destroy 
forever the curse of witchcraft, by attacking the 
theological theory on which it was founded. The 
Pilgrims were entirely free from this superstition, 
and so also were the Massachusetts people wdio 
had settled in the Merrimac valley. 

Many tens of thousands of people w^re put to 
death in various countries of Europe for the sup- 
posed crime of witchcraft. King James w^as a great 
witch-persecutor. On his return voyage from Den- 
mark, whither he had gone for his bride, he was 
kept back by contrary winds. These he imagined 
were raised by Scotch witches, who had come out 
to sea in sieves for the purpose of troubling him. 
This James, the fool-king, wrote a book on witch- 
craft and published it in Edinburgh, in 1597. He 
issued a new edition in London in 1603, and had 
a new and more terrible statute against witches 
passed, under which fresh persecutions broke out 
in Great Britain and the New England colonies. 
The epidemic bred by James' new law began in 
Connecticut, and before 1652 there were thirty 



150 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

trials of accused persons and eight capital execu- 
tions. Then the delusion quieted down. 

Forty years later, the insanity broke out at 
Danvers or Salem village, in Massachusetts. There 
were no lawyers. Trials were held without any 
cross-questioning of the witnesses or the sifting of 
evidence, and only intolerant clergy and the royal 
ofovernor had oversioht of the tribunals. When 
some young folks charged that certain old women 
tormented them by coming through keyholes and 
sticking pins in their flesh, they were believed. 
Then the excitement quickly became an epidemic. 
Like a virulent and infectious disease, the delusion 
ran its frightful course. Certain persons were 
charged with being in league with the devil and 
his imps, and were sentenced to death. None of 
them was burned, as many thoughtless people say, 
but nineteen people were hanged. 

The place is still called Gallows Hill, on which 
this judicial murder was perpetrated. When, a few 
years ago, the two-hundredth anniversary of this 
sad episode was celebrated, the writer of this book 
subscribed one dollar to a citizen in Salem, who had 
proposed a monument in honor and vindication of 
the victims of the Salem witchcraft, but the money 
was returned and nothing has been done. 

There are some w^ho think that the panic at 
Salem was largely caused by Cotton Mather's writ- 



CONNECriCUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 151 

ing " Memorable Providences." It is certain that 
the Salem people quickly awoke to their senses, and 
in 1693 all convicted and accused persons were set 
free. Finally, this nightmare of Christendom was 
lifted. Common sense and science asserted them- 
selves, and the Bible ceased to be misused in the 
interests of paganism. On the whole, it is remark- 
able that in all the English colonies, the witchcraft 
delusion broke out in so few places, although in 
England the law in favor of witch-killing was not 
repealed until the year 1736. 

Even John Wesley, however, in 1768 said, "The / 
giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up of the/ 
Bible," which is much like what some people say in 
our day of the literary or higher criticism of the Script- 
ures. Holland led off in the reforms, and England 
followed. After these, Germany, Spain, and Scot- 
land, in their order, were the countries in which the 
greatest number of victims suffered death. As late 
as 1873, witches were judicially burned in Mexico. 

Only two of the original thirteen colonies took 
their names from the Indians. These were Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut, the first from a hill, and 
the second from a river-valley. The coast and some 
parts inland north of Long Island Sound were first 
explored by the Dutch, more particularly by Captain 
Block, whose name remains on Block Island and 
who gave the name Fresh to the river. Another 



152 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

great stream that furnishes Connecticut with a tim- 
ber sHde and with water power has taken its name 
from that part of the state which the early Dutch 
called Woesten Hoek, or the wilderness region or 
corner where the wild men live. This word, as pro- 
nounced by Indians, has become " Housatonic." 
Claiming this land by virtue of discovery and a part 
of New Netherland, the Dutch governor, as we have 
seen, sent a party of men first to carry out the usual 
policy of buying the land from the Indians, and 
then to erect the House of Good Hope, near the 
site of Hartford. 

The Plymouth men also claimed this region as 
lying within their patent; but as both they and the 
Dutch desired to live together before the savages in 
peace as Christians, and not to get to fighting among 
themselves, to the scandal of religion, they refrained 
from hostilities. It was only late in his lifetime 
that Governor Bradford, probably under pressure 
from others, wanted to get the Bay Colony to help 
them to expel the Dutch. The New Netherlanders 
had no desire to go to war with their Protestant 
neighbors. Their home government ordered them, 
above all things, to keep the peace ; for brave little 
Holland was still fighting mighty Spain for her lib- 
erty and needed England's friendship. 

The English, however, coveted the trade of the 
Indians, and longed to occupy these fertile acres in 



CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 1 53 

the river valleys, and Englishmen are rarely ever 
known to be too hesitant or delicate about seizing 
possession of any part of the w^orld w^hen they want 
it. We soon find the Eastern colonists moving into 
the Connecticut valley, without much regard to other 
claimants of ownership. In 1633 Lieutenant Will- 
iam Holmes, unharmed by the Dutch, sailed up the 
river in a vessel having on board the frame of a 
house, and soon emigrants from the Bay Colony be- 
gan the towns of Wethersfield and Windsor. A few 
months later the English Company, which possessed 
a grant from the king, sent out John Winthrop, a 
son of the Boston governor, who built a fort at the 
mouth of the Connecticut River. He tore down the 
Dutch signs of ownership, and named the fort after 
two of the chief stockholders of the company, Lord 
Say and Brook, — Saybrook. 

When news reached the coast settlements that the 
country so near New Netherland had been settled, 
the Boston and Plymouth folks spoke of the new 
region as " the West." Hearing of its fertile soil, 
some of the newcomers, who did not like the rather 
severe government of the Massachusetts Colony, re- 
solved to emio-rate. It must not be foro-otten that 
some of these Massachusetts colonists were old sol- 
diers who had served in the Dutch war, or others 
who had been in the republic, and who could not 
stand the rather close social atmosphere. Among 



154 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the latter was Thomas Hooker, a Cambridge grad- 
uate, who had been persecuted for his nonconformity 
in England, and who had lived three years in Delft and 
Rotterdam. He had come secretly to America, for 
King Charles was having the emigrant ships searched 
and even stopped from sailing. Another leader was 
John Davenport, a Puritan divine, who had been 
ejected from the political church in England, and 
afterwards spent two years in Holland. When in 
New Haven, believing that Charles H. had justly lost 
his head, he gave shelter to two of the judges, called 
" regicides," because they had ordered Charles Stuart, 
the law-breaker, to the block. 

Hooker found a company of about one hundred 
people, young and old, men and women, who were 
willing to go with him. So they started to "go 
West," taking a two weeks' walk through the woods, 
crossing the rivers on rafts and finding their way 
without any guide, except the compass and the sun 
and stars. They also drove before them their cattle 
and hoo's, and had the fresh milk of the cows to 
live upon. In health and safety they joined the lit- 
tle settlement of Englishmen at Hartford. Daven- 
port and his colony came later by water. Landing 
in 1638, at a spot in New Haven now marked by a 
tablet, they held divine service under a great oak 
tree, Davenport preaching a sermon in the open air. 
In the spring they met in a large barn and agreed 
upon a form of government. 



CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 1 55 

The Connecticut settlers did not seem to have 
sufficient tact, or else the love of peace in them was 
not strong enough, to enable them to live quietly 
with the Indians. When the Pequots threatened to 
destroy the white settlers, the men of the three towns 
in the Connecticut valley, — Hartford, Wethersfield, 
and Windsor, — instead of punishing the ringlead- 
ers, agreed to exterminate the Pequots in their 
stronghold. For this purpose the}^ raised ninety 
men and put them under the command of Captain 
John Mason, a veteran of the Dutch wars. With 
some friendly Mohicans and Narragansett warriors, 
— though Roger Williams had persuaded the main 
tribe not to fight, — Mason attacked and surprised 
the Indian fort. B)^ sword, bullet, or fire, about five 
hundred Pequots were destroyed. In another expe- 
dition in western Connecticut, Captain Mason nearly 
annihilated the tribe. Thus the Indians paid the 
aw^ful penalty of the murders which they had com- 
mitted. 

Those settlers of Connecticut led by men who 
had seen how a country could be governed without 
a king, under a written constitution, were quite dif- 
ferent from the people in the Bay Colony. The 
society of Massachusetts was rather aristocratic in 
form. Royalty had many favorites. Towns, vil- 
lages, and streets were frequently named in honor 
of the king or his friends. Indeed, one can almost 



156 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

read in the place and road names of Massachusetts 
the history of Great Britain's royalty and of the 
different countries from which the kings came. On 
the contrary, in Connecticut, the spirit of the peo- 
ple was from the first very democratic. They 
avoided whatever savored of nobles, courts, and 
kings. Except Windsor, which was settled by 
Massachusetts people, one will not find in the whole 
state the name of any king or his favorites. Two 
reasons, out of many, for this lie in the Dutch 
leaven imported by Hooker, Davenport, Mason, and 
other denizens of the republic, and in the large in- 
fusion of Welsh emigrants. Moreover, a consider- 
able proportion of family names in Connecticut 
despite great changes in form and spelling, are un- 
mistakably of Netherlandish or Huguenot origin. 

The first political arrangements of Connecticut 
were wonderfully like those in the Dutch United 
States, in which Davenport, Hooker, and Mason, 
and perhaps other prominent men in Connecticut, 
had spent some time. These resemblances to things 
in the republic which sheltered the Pilgrims, and 
in which all the colonial military men were trained, 
is more than accidental. In 1639 the people of 
the three towns met, and, after the model of the 
Dutch republic, drew up a written constitution. 
The spirit of Hooker, who preached that authority 
under God resides with the people, took form in 



CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 1 57 

writing. No mention was made in the text of the 
King of England, or of the company holding the 
king's grant. Suffrage was not limited to church 
members, but all citizens were equal in political 
privilege. In the legislature the basis of representa- 
tion was not by population, but by towns, each hav- 
ing one vote. After the Frisian fashion, the written 
ballot was used. The duties of the mao-istrates 
were substantially those of the Dutch schepens. 
The colonial government of Connecticut was the 
closest of all the colonial types of the later national 
government of the United States. 

Out of the Plymouth Company's territory, which 
received the name of New England, no fewer than 
seven colonies were formed. Massachusetts at first 
and for a long time claimed the territory of Maine 
and New Hampshire. Maine was governed as part 
of Massachusetts, not becoming a state until 1820, 
the people being ruled meanwhile under the Andros 
charter. 

" Maine " is the same word as " main " in main- 
land. At the Centennial Exposition of 1876, in 
Philadelphia, a man from Augusta, on inquiring 
for " the Maine building," was shown the largest on 
the grounds, — the Main Hall. Thereupon he 
remarked, " Well, I knew that our boys would do 
the handsome thing." Some French people believe 
that, since their countrymen settled the northern 



158 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

portion of this wonderful region of the pointed firs, 
the name was taken from the Galhc province of the 
same name. Another name frequent in early his- 
tory is Laconia, which some think arose from the 
numerous lakes for which Maine is still famous, 
or because the territory was supposed to extend to 
Lake Ontario. 

No other state has so beautiful and variegated a 
rocky coast-line, or so many indentations, giving a 
water frontage of nearly twenty-five hundred miles, 
or such abundance of natural water power. Maine 
excels in the number of bold landmarks, such as 
rivers, mountains, and sheets of water. Its area is 
nearly equal to that of all the other Eastern states. 
Its chief products are ice in winter and granite in 
summer. The population is probably of purer Eng- 
ish stock than any other state, and it is famous for 
the number of great men which it has produced. 

New Hampshire received its name through John 
Mason, a native of the county of Hampshire, Eng- 
land, who settled on the Piscataqua at Dover, in 
1627. Before this time a Scotchman named David 
Thompson, who has an island in Boston harbor 
named after him, had made a successful settlement 
at the same place in 1623, and was in friendly 
cooperation with the Pilgrims. The Plymouth 
Company had, as early as 1623, made a grant of 
the country between the Merrimac and Kennebec 



CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 159 

rivers to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 
who had served in the Dutch war. After a few 
years, these proprietors decided to divide the ter- 
ritory. Mason took the land west of the river, 
while Gorges took the eastern division. In 1638, 
when Rev. John Wheelwright was expelled from 
Massachusetts for sympathy with Mrs. Hutchinson, 
he and some of his congregation moved northward 
and settled the town of Exeter. 

The scattered population, being constantly ex- 
posed to the inroads of the French and hostile 
Indians, kept by the seashore. The settlements 
of New Hampshire were mostly fishing villages, 
among which Portsmouth and Dover were the 
largest. In 1641 the little colony asked to be 
united to Massachusetts. Not likino; the restric- 
tion of the ballot to church members, they were 
allowed to vote and hold office without question as 
to their membership in religious societies. In later 
years Scottish and Irish settlers brought to the 
colony, which became the Old Granite State, the 
splendid qualities for which this Scotch- Irish stock 
is deservedly famous. The New Hampshire colo- 
nists always took part generously and bravely in the 
colonial wars and enterprises. They numbered eighty 
thousand souls at the opening of the Revolution. 

Vermont was first looked upon by a white man 
when Champlain came down the lake named after 



l6o THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

himself. It was for ages the battle-field and hunting- 
ground of the Algonquin and the Iroquois Indians, 
The former tribes had first possession of it; for 
almost all the Indian names of lakes, rivers, and 
other landmarks are Algonquin and not Iroquois. 
Then armed bands of English and French roamed 
over its territory, which was claimed both by New 
Hampshire and by New York. Probably the first 
English settlement was Fort Dummer, built near 
the city of Brattleboro in 1724. The question as 
to who owned the land in the Green Mountain 
region was not settled until after the Revolution. 

Thus the Eastern colonies on or near the Atlan- 
tic seacoast were begun by the Pilgrims and built 
up by the Puritans. In overwhelming majority 
the people were British, and most of this majority 
were English who came largely from the eastern, 
middle, and southern counties of England, though 
all of the shires were represented. 

Whatever the faults of the Puritans may have 
been, they have left their ineffaceable stamp upon 
our national history. They had an intense convic- 
tion of the truth as they saw it, a clear idea of the 
authority of righteousness, a profound assurance 
of God's just and holy rule, and a deep sense ot 
the dignity of man. They lacked interest in things 
^Esthetic. They were contemptuous of some of the 
minor elegances of life. They were wanting in 



CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE. l6l 

sympathy with questioning minds. Often they were 
unlovely and unattractive in their methods. The 
records of their courts and churches show that 
hypocrisy was common, and that their average ethi- 
cal practice was sufficiently far from their theory. 

Nevertheless, there were magnificent qualities in 
the Puritan spirit, such as its masterful sincerity, 
its majestic ideal, its superb and shining courage, 
its triumphant disregard of institutions, its clearest 
vision of things celestial and eternal. 

Such a concentration of intellect, education, and 
homes in the Eastern colonies produced in colonial 
times and later its due results. Until our great 
Civil War, New England was almost a nation, and a 
noble one, in itself. Her sons and daughters have 
profoundly influenced the nation by their intellect, 
literary abilities, and enterprise. In education and 
in moral reforms, Massachusetts led all the colonies 
and states, and the brio-htest names in American 
literature are those of her children. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MARYLAND AND CATHOLIC LIBERALITY. 

THE church by law estabhshed in England was 
peculiar in many respects. When the Reforma- 
tion aroused Europe from the intellectual slumbers 
of the middle ages, the Latin nations held to the 
Roman ideas, systems, and religion. The Germanic 
nations, revising their doctrines, ritual, and church 
order, instituted national Reformed churches. 

Wherever the Reformation was led by the people, 
the tone of the church was democratic ; where it was 
directed by the Puritans, it was aristocratic ; where, 
as in England, it was ordered by the monarch, the 
state-church bishops were lords of the realm. The 
Reformed church of Holland, for example, was in- 
tensely democratic. The Lutheran church in Ger- 
many was ruled by the princes and their advisers. 
In England the bishops, who were appointees of 
the king and were even called lords bishops, had 
greater power than in any other Protestant country. 
In Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland the demo- 
cratic spirit prevailed. 

162 



MARYLAND AND CATHOLIC LIBERALITY. ,63 

To secure the union of State and Church in Fn<.. 
land persecution was used, and it is hard to tetl 
whether the Puritans or the CathoMcs suffered the 
most; for both were lieavily fined unless they attended 
the services of the ciuirch of England. Such coer- 
cion „i the end proved of little benefit ; for althouoh 
based on force, the Established Church has to-dav 
only a minority of English and only a small fraction 
of Welsh people within her pale, while in Ireland it 
has been reduced to a level with the other denomi- 
nations In the British colonies, the sect which in 
England ,s subsidized by the state is simply one 
among many, just as in the United States, where all 
varieties of religion must show their fitness to live 
by righteousness and not by dependence upon the 
sword or the public treasury. The Dutch republic 
hrst as our constitutional fathers confessed, and the 
United States of America ne.xt, have been the leaders 
in demonstrating that religion is better oS when it 
IS voluntary and let alone by the state 

The Plymouth Pilgrims were not the only ones 
to get away from such a persecuting church It 
was not they alone who were Pilgrims. The Catho- 
lics suffered terribly. George Calvert, called Lord 
Baltimore, an English Catholic nobleman, looked to 
America to find a refuge for his fellow-worshippers 
who w^re harried in England. Being in favor with 
King Charles I„ his sovereign granted him a tract 



164 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

of land in northern Virginia, which was named 
Maryland. Geography was not well understood in 
those days, for even the coast-line had been but 
little measured and mapped out. This grant of 
Mary's land — for the French queen of Charles, 
Henrietta-Marie, gave her name to the new country 
— included, in addition to the territory of the Mary- 
land of to-day, Delaware, part of Pennsylvania, and 
West Virginia. 

All the Southern colonies were named after British 
sovereigns, — Virginia from the virgin Queen Eliza- 
beth ; Maryland from Mary Stuart, the wife of King 
Charles I.; the two Carolinas after Charles II.; and 
Georgia after King George II. Although Lord 
Baltimore died before the charter was signed, his 
son Cecil Calvert received the patent and, having 
great powers, carried on the work. In the spring 
of 1634 he sent out a colony of three hundred 
people, who crossed the ocean in the first section of 
a fleet under the command of the Dutch Admiral 
Van Bibber, from whom some of the best families 
in Maryland are descended. The ships were named 
the Ark and the Dove, the former being a large 
vessel of three hundred and fifty tons and the latter 
a pinnace of but fifty tons. 

The company of " gentlemen adventurers " and 
their servants left Gravesend and stopped at the 
Isle of Wight, where two Jesuit fathers, White and 



MARYLAND AND CATHOLIC LIBERALITY. 165 

Altham, with some of the other emigrants were 
taken on board. Leaving Cowes November 22, 
1633, they followed the old route, by the Azores 
and the West Indies, reaching Point Comfort Feb- 
ruary 27, 1634. Meeting the Indians, they assured 
them of their desire to impart the arts of civiliza- 
tion and to teach them the way to heaven. Con- 
sidering that the aborigines had some rights to the 
soil, they bought thirty miles of the land from them 
for hatchets and cloth, and thus established their 
colony with the good will of the red men. 

On the 27th of March, 1634, amid the firing of 
the ships' cannon, the emigrants disembarked from 
the Ark and began their new home. The Indians 
at once taught the white strangers the mysteries of 
woodcraft, to hunt the deer, to plant and use the 
chief American grain, to cook corn meal, and to 
make first-rate cakes and succotash. The EnoHsh- 
men were so fortunate in their agriculture, that in 
this same year they raised a crop of maize, which 
they were able to send to Massachusetts to exchange 
for salt fish and other provisions. The Jesuit 
fathers set up the first Roman Catholic church in 
America, and began preaching the gospel among 
the Indians. Under their teachino-s manv of the 
Protestants also, who were the laborers or servants 
in the colony, became Catholics. When Tayac, 
chief of the Piscataquas, was baptized, Governor 



1 66 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Calvert and the principal men of the colony were 
present at the ceremony. 

The original colony consisted of twenty men of 
property or social standing, and the rest were wage- 
earners or dependents ; but all of them took part in 
making the laws, and, in a few years, they had the 
power of originating them. The Assembly was 
composed of sixteen members, — nine burgesses or 
representatives, six councillors, and a governor, — 
and they entered upon their duties in 1649. Six 
were of the Reformed and eight were of the Roman 
form of the Christian faith, that of the others not 
being certain. 

The very first law passed was one guaranteeing 
religious liberty. It set forth that no person " Pro- 
fessing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from thence- 
forth be in any wise troubled, molested, or discoun- 
tenanced, for, or in respect of his or her religion, 
nor in the free exercise thereof within this Prov- 
ince . . . nor in any way compelled to the belief or 
exercise of any other religion against his or her 
consent." Thus, one of the first of the colonies to 
grant entire freedom of conscience was that under 
a Roman Catholic proprietor. In the same year. 
Governor Stone invited the Puritans who had been 
banished from Virginia to settle in Maryland. 
They came, and named the place where they settled 
Providence, on the site of Annapolis. 



MARYLAND AND CATHOLIC LIBERALITY. 167 

Thus nobly did Maryland follow the example of 
the country of Admiral Van Bibber, though the 
Marylanders fell far behind the Dutch in restrict- 
ing their toleration or their grant of religious liberty 
to Christians who must be either Roman or Re- 
formed ; for their laws did not protect Jews and 
those who rejected the divinity of Christ. 

The colonists had many troubles. Clayborne 
the Virginian held Cat Island in Chesapeake Bay, 
and would not leave until driven out by force. The 
Civil War, which divided the English people at 
home, compelled those in Maryland to array them- 
selves on hostile sides, either for the Protector or 
Pretender. Clayborne's Rebellion kept the country 
disturbed during the better part of three years. 
The bold and unscrupulous Captain Ingle seized 
the colony in the name of the Puritan parliament of 
England, and sent home the aged Jesuit Father 
White in irons. When the Commonwealth was 
established, its commissioners in Maryland acted in 
a most intolerant manner, allowing no Catholics to 
have a seat in the legislature. They repealed the 
statute of toleration and prohibited Catholic wor- 
ship. The old story of the poor cony that invited 
the hedgehog into its hole on a rainy day, only to 
be driven out, was enacted over again. The name 
of Puritan was disgraced by bigotry and intol- 
erance. 



1 68 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

In 1658 Lord Baltimore was reinvested with his 
rights, and freedom of worship again restored. 
Then the colony became fairly prosperous. To- 
bacco was cultivated and became the chief export. 
It was even used like money, at a penny a pound. 
In spite of the determination of the British govern- 
ment to repress manufactures, there were eight 
copper furnaces and nine forges in operation by 
1750. Some wine was also produced. Both land 
and sea food were abundant, and the eastern shore 
became early famous for its oysters, terrapin, can- 
vas-back ducks, and other delicacies. A generous 
hospitality and a society rich in social graces have 
ever characterized Maryland. 

Thus the Catholics in Maryland and in our nation, 
in spite of their occasional blunders in politics, have 
always shown themselves in living sympathy with 
what is truly American. Reading the future by 
the past, we may be sure that, in time of foreign in- 
vasion or internal commotion, our government and 
nation may always rely upon their strong right arm. 
Slowly and surely the Catholics in the United States 
have progressed to a broad liberality, in spite of 
hostile secret organizations based on uncharitable- 
ness and injustice. The beginnings of Maryland 
were prophetic. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CAROLINAS. 

THE English people in the seventeenth century, 
especially after so many thousands of the best 
of them had emigrated to America, were not pre- 
pared for a republic ; for they were not at that time 
educated up to the idea. When Cromwell died, 
there was no one to take his place and do his work. 
His son Richard proved a weak ruler, and soon the 
way was made ready in England by partisans of the 
Stuarts for the return of the monarchy, in 1660. 

The new king, Charles H., had taken refuge in 
the Netherlands, where he was kindly treated, 
though he afterwards repaid the kindness of the 
Dutch by the foulest treachery. After the Royalist 
party had regained authority, Charles appointed 
Edward Hyde, one of his faithful followers. Lord 
Chancellor of Engrland and Prime Minister. In 
1 66 1 this man, known as the Earl of Clarendon, 
who afterwards wrote what he called a history of 
" the rebellion," interested himself in the work of 
colonizing America. In 1663 he and his associates 
formed a company, to which Charles granted the 

169 



170 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

vast territory lying south of Virginia. Retaining 
the name Carolina, which Charles IX. of France 
had given to the region when the Huguenots settled 
there in the previous century, they considered 
that they were getting all the land stretching west- 
ward to the Pacific Ocean and from Virginia to 
the tip of Florida. 

General Monk, the chief agent in the restoration 
of the Stuarts and who was usually known in his day 
as " Old Monk," was made Duke of Albemarle. 
He it was who first clothed the British soldiers in 
scarlet, making them the famous " red coats " of whom 
we have heard so much, and whom our fathers met 
in the Revolutionary War. Like almost all leaders 
of the parliamentary army, he had fought under the 
banners of the Dutch republic. He served the 
king first, then Cromwell, and then the king again. 
He was in the Dutch pay early in life and later 
fouQ-ht against them in command of an EnoHsh 
fleet. His title-name has been given to Albemarle 
Sound. The name of another member, Lord 
Shaftesbur}^ or Mr. Ashley-Cooper, was given to two 
rivers in South Carolina. Other members of the 
company were Craven, Colleton, Carteret, and two 
men named Berkeley. 

The first colony, made up of settlers in Virginia, 
was called Albemarle and the second, composed 
largely of planters who came from the West Indies, 



THE CAROLINAS. I'Jl 

Clarendon. During the next four years few colonists 
came from England to Carolina, and most of the 
actual settlers were the HuQ-uenots or Christians of 
the Reformed church of France. In 1670 a body 
of these excellent people, who had come in two ships, 
landed much further south, forming the city of 
Charleston, which they named in honor of the king. 
After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, 
a still larger host of Huguenots settled in Carolina. 
This act of the bigoted Bourbon, Louis XIV., 
drove out of France five hundred thousand of 
the best people of the nation, impoverishing the 
country, but enriching Germany, Holland, Eng- 
land, and America. France paid dearly for her 
tyrant's folly. About one-half of the soldiers in the 
splendid army of William of Orange, which marched 
into London in 168S, to drive out Louis' ally, James 
II., were Huguenots. In 187 1, in the German 
army of invasion, six hundred officers and thousands 
of privates were descendants of the French exiles 
of 1685. 

From the very beginning, the company had 
granted religious liberty to all colonists, and this 
attracted many people of various nationalities, not 
only from Europe, but from other parts of America. 
The ship Phcenix, from New York, brought Ger- 
mans, who built Jamestown on the Stone River, 
English, Irish, Scottish, French, Swiss, and more 



1/2 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Germans came to settle the new country. All 
Christians lived harmoniously together, until Lord 
Granville began his ruinous course of bigotry. He 
attempted to remove the religious privileges of the 
colonists, by excluding all who were not members 
of the Anglican church from the colonial legislat- 
ure. This abominable policy started the struggle 
between the proprietors and the people, which 
finally led to the loss of their title by the former. 

Even before this, in 1670, Mr. Anthony Ashley- 
Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, a fierce 
persecutor of the Catholics, attempted a silly experi- 
ment. He persuaded his secretary, the English 
philosopher John Locke, to write a constitution 
for Carolina, which he and his friends believed to 
be the most perfect work of its kind in existence. 
Locke was a closet statesman, despite the fact that 
he wrote a book " On the Human Understanding," 
which is supposed to embody the philosophy of 
common sense. In reality, this constitution was 
rather like a fossil of feudalism. It was one of those 
ridiculous systems of government in which the 
common people, who are the real makers of govern- 
ment, had no vote and no rights, but in which the 
noblemen monopolized privilege and power. The 
colonial parliament was graded into four chambers, 
— proprietors, landgraves, caziques, and lords of 
manors. The people were only "leet-men" or serfs, 



THE CAROLINAS. 1 73 

attached to the soil Hke the old adscripti glcbcc of the 
Roman empire. Even their very food and clothes 
were regulated by a paternal government. 

This constitution never got very much further 
than the paper on which it was written. Certainly, 
people of Scottish descent could never live under 
it. After twenty years of vain attempts at enforc- 
ing it, the proprietors gave up the idea. The docu- 
ment is now an interesting relic known only to 
antiquarians. 

Shaftesbury was but one of a long list of foolish 
and impractical members of the semi-feudal society 
of England, who have tried to make worn-out old- 
world notions work in America, and whose failures 
are legion. 

The new colonists were very industrious. They 
cut down the forests, cleared the soil for plantations, 
experimented with seeds which they had brought 
from Europe, raised excellent cattle, built comfort- 
able houses, opened trade with the Indians, and ex- 
plored the country. They soon found it necessary 
to form military companies for defence against the 
hostile natives and the Spaniards in Florida. Along 
the sultry low country of the coast there was much 
malaria and consequent sickness, but gradually the 
people pushed into the interior to the high lands 
and to the healthier plateaus. This scattered the 
settlers and prevented the growth of large towns. 



174 ^^^P- ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

The great demand for naval stores in Europe gave 
the people plenty to do in the forest, making pitch, 
tar, rosin, and turpentine. 

In 1672 Sir John Yeamans imported the first 
slaves from Africa into the Carolinas. Here the 
negroes found a congenial environment and mul- 
tiplied. Their masters were very apt to name 
their black servants after classic heroes and gods 
of mythology, such as Pompey, C^sar, Hannibal, 
Remus, and Jason. It was not all sweat and toil 
for poor Sambo. He, too, had his fun and romance 
and beguiled the hours of rest and the long night- 
hours with fairy stories as old as the Aryans. In 
the new Western world, the ancient African folk- 
lore, a mixture of the paganism of the jungle and 
of distorted Buddhism, took on new forms. 

The typical Uncle Remus no longer told the 
ancient animal stories borrowed from India, Arabia, 
and Egypt in the old African way, but used the 
creatures and scenery closest to him. In this way 
grew up the tales about " Brer Rabbit " and the 
" Tar Baby." In substance, the story is the same 
in India and Japan. It does not seem difficult to 
recognize in the sticky creature of our southern 
coast forests the old imp of matted locks and 
snarled-up hair with which the Buddha once fought 
and to which he stuck fast. The story contains a 
parable almost as old as human nature. In due 



THE CAROLINAS. 1 75 

time the children of African pagans learned the 
story of infinite love. To-day the negro shares in 
the Christianity and civilization of the great republic, 
in which religion — its forms settled by conscience 
and not by edict — is all the purer for being free. 

North Carolina is famous for its great forests of 
tar-bearing trees, which abound within fifty leagues 
of the coast. The production of turpentine, tar, 
pitch, and rosin, so necessary in the days of wooden 
ships, was a vital necessity to Great Britain; but 
similar experiments tried in the Mohawk valley by 
the Palatine Germans failed, because the famous 
" Georgia pine," the great tar-bearing tree of this 
continent, does not grow north of southern Virginia. 

When, in 1693, ^ ship from Madagascar came in 
and the captain gave a bag of rice to the governor, 
a new era of agricultural industry and of commerce 
began. This Oriental grain, the bread-food of Asia, 
found in southern Carolina a soil exactly suited to 
it. The farmers planted the rice on the swampy 
lands, until by and by this cereal became the chief 
crop, the product being the best quality in the 
world. South Carolina became a laro-e botanic 

O 

garden and experimental station on a large scale. 
Many new plants were offered a home in the new 
soil, among others indigo, which formerly had been 
raised only in Asia. This also was found to be 
admirably suited to the fertile and marshy land, and 



1/6 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

became a standard crop. In the markets of Europe 
the bhie coloring matter brought over a dollar a 
pound. Indigo was followed by cotton, which, after 
the invention of the cotton gin, became even more 
lucrative, making South Carolina one of the richest 
of the Southern colonies and Charleston the metro- 
politan city of the South. Many young men were 
sent to Europe to be educated, while the name of 
the colony, because of its large trade and good credit, 
was well and favorably known in many countries. 

The palmetto tree, both for utility and sentiment, 
is the tree of South Carolina. From the tender 
leaves of one sort may be made food and from the 
tough ones hats. With its logs, piers that defy the 
teredo mollusk and a fort that harmlessly absorbed 
British cannon-balls have been built. Another 
species, as being the congenial home of rattlesnakes, 
became the emblem on the colonial flag of the 
Palmetto State, though another flag had the coiled 
reptile itself with the legend, " Don't tread on me." 

In 1729 the colony was divided into North Caro- 
lina and South Carolina. Then it ceased to be 
governed by proprietors and, being under direct 
control of the king, became a royal province. The 
Carolinas were the first of the twin colonies to sepa- 
rate, as the Jerseys were the first pair of colonies 
of the same name to unite and be known as one 
region and community. 



CHAPTER XV. 

GEORGIA, THE LAST OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. 

GEORGIA was the last of the five Southern 
colonies settled. Its first beginning was not 
until the days of the generation just before the Rev- 
olutionary War. It was a period of great financial 
distress in England. Thousands of men were out 
of employment and the prisons were full of debtors. 
The law then was that if a man owed even a few 
pence, he could be put in jail. There he could 
save himself from starvation only by the help of his 
friends, or by begging through the bars of the cage 
in which he was kept. John Howard, the Baptist 
sheriff of Bedfordshire, had not yet come to reform 
the prisons of England, which were then a disgrace 
to civilization and far below the standard of Chris- 
tianity on the Continent. 

There was a military officer named James Ed- 
ward Oglethorpe, who had served in the Netherland 
campaigns under the Duke of Marlborough. He 
had no doubt seen how much better the prisoners 
were treated on the Continent and certainly in Hol- 

177 



178 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

land. Returning from the wars, he spent much 
time among the prisons of London, and his heart 
was touclied. When he saw such widespread mis- 
ery, he determined to do something to give these 
poor wretches a new start in hfe. America then, 
as now, meant opportunity. His scheme met with 
favor from the British government, which was then 
under a new dynasty, — that of German princes 
named Guelph, from Hanover. Under the patron- 
age of King George H. a fund was started to which 
private individuals generously subscribed, making a 
sum equal to more than half a million dollars in 
present values. It was also thought that if placed 
further south than the Carolinas, the new colony 
would help to protect those provinces from Spanish 
invasion. 

An association of twenty-two persons was formed, 
of which General Oglethorpe, then in the prime of 
life, was made the president, and of which the Wes- 
leys and Whitfield were members. The present state 
of Georgia, named after King George H., is shaped 
somewhat like New Hampshire, especially in having 
a large inland hilly area with but a few miles of 
seacoast. It was hoped that in the new region both 
wine and silk could be produced in large quantities. 
The ship Anne left England November 17, 1732, 
the same year in which Washington was born, hav- 
ing one hundred and thirty persons, in thirty-five 



GEORGIA, LAST OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. 1 79 

families, among whom were carpenters, brick-layers, 
farmers, and mechanics. 

These first builders of a new commonwealth were 
well equipped with arms, tools, munitions, and 
stores. General Oglethorpe accompanied them. 
Sailing by way of Madeira, they entered the Savan- 
nah River, and made friendship with the Yamakraw 
Indians, through Mary Muskgrove, the daughter 
of a Canadian trader by an Indian mother. She 
persuaded the natives of the friendly intentions of 
the colonists, and secured from them an informal 
cession of the land. Thus, through a woman's tact 
and friendly offices, the way of success was made 
clear. 

Early in February, the colonists began to mark 
out the squares and lots of the beautiful city of 
Savannah, Oglethorpe working hard among them 
every day. He also won the friendship of the 
Indians, and in May, 1733, invited them to the new 
settlement. A treaty was made May 21, by which 
the Creek Indians ceded to the whites a large tract 
of territory, and for many years the whites and the 
reds lived together like brothers. Equally with 
Oglethorpe should honor be awarded to Tomo-chi- 
chi, who was a Mico, or chief of chiefs, the guide 
and protector of the founders of Georgia. 

Many of the Palatine Germans and Swiss had 
already settled in the Carolinas. Now into Georgia 



l80 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

came Germans from further east, besides many of 
the Moravians. In the Austrian Salzburg, prelati- 
cal bigotry, which in 149S had expelled the Jews 
and for centuries riveted the chains of despotism 
upon the people, had become unbearable to the 
Lutherans. Thirty thousand of these Bible-reading 
Christians, driven from their homes, had fled into 
Holland and England. Being invited to settle in 
Georgia, they took the oath of allegiance to the 
British king, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean. In 
March 1734, the ship Pjirisbiirg, having on board 
seventy-eight Salzburgers with their ministers, 
arrived in the colony. Warmly welcomed, they 
founded the town of Ebenezer. 

It is interesting to notice how many towns in the 
United States have been named, not after the saints 
or churchly persons, but in recognition of the direct 
blessing of God. Note the Biblical or early Christian 
ideas, words, or characters, such as Philadelphia, 
Bethlehem, Nazareth, Salem, Providence, Sharon, 
Ebenezer, and Pella. Wherever people from the 
Latin nations settled in America, the names of 
saints abound. 

The next year, more of these sober, industrious, 
and strongly religious people of Germany came 
over. The Moravians, who followed, quickly began 
missionary work among the Indians. After these 
came the Scotsmen, who, under Lieutenant Hugh 



GEORGIA, LAST OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. l8l 

Maclay, had been recruited from the Highlands 
of old Scotia. They were brave men of excellent 
character, numbering one hundred and thirty, with 
fifty women and children, and were led by their own 
clergyman, Rev. John McLeod of the Island of 
Skye. With their plaids and their broadswords, 
their targets and muskets, these manly countrymen 
of Bruce and Wallace were just the men to ward off 
Spanish invasion. After them, again, followed Ger- 
man Lutherans, Moravians, English emigrants, 
Scotch-Irish Quakers, Mennonites, and others. 
Thus in Georgia, as in the Carolinas and Virginia, 
there was formed a miniature New Europe, having 
a varied population, with many sterling qualities. 
The history of England was repeated in the blend- 
ing of races, and with the same result, — the pro- 
duction of an admirable stock, from which have 
sprung a remarkable number of men and women 
of eminent ability. 

There was great popular discontent at first, 
because the colony had been placed on a military 
or feudal basis. The regulations of the company 
did not allow self-government, or the holding of 
land by women, or the importation of liquor or of 
slaves. These repressive rules prevented competi- 
tion with other colonies, while the ban against 
Roman Catholics showed that entire relisfious lib- 
erty was not yet known in Georgia. The Wesleys, 



1 82 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

John and Charles, visited the colony, but were not 
much encouraged, for their success was indifferent ; 
but Whitfield succeeded in establishing an orphan 
asylum near Savannah. By his influence slavery 
was introduced and laws were passed which allowed 
a better land tenure and removed restrictions, thus 
greatly improving commerce. The colonists de- 
fended themselves with wisdom and valor against 
the Spaniards. In 1752 the colony became a royal 
province. From the first it was noticed that there 
were oreat riches in beds of coal and iron. Later 
on, cotton made Georo-ia one of the wealthiest of 
the colonies in natural products, besides leading in 
the trade with the West Indies. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

WILLIAM PENN AND THE JERSEYS. 

NEW NETHERLAND included all the land 
on which now rest the four Middle states of 
the Union, besides part of Connecticut and Massa- 
chusetts, the Hudson River and Lake Champlain 
region, and the unexplored territory westward. 
What is now New Jersey was first occupied by 
Dutch inhabitants in 1617. The traders of Man- 
hattan Island crossed over the river and at a place 
which they called the Hills, or Bergen, they erected 
a fortified trading-post. Then moving to the south- 
west, they built a house for business and defence at 
Gloucester, on the river opposite the site of Phila- 
delphia. Between 16 14 and 1621, there was con- 
siderable traffic in furs. After the regular settlers 
had begun agriculture and the patroons settled their 
manors, there were Dutch farms, shipyards, and 
trading stations. 

When the treacherous attack in time of peace 
was made on New Netherland by the Duke of 
York, this ignoble man transferred the whole terri- 
tory lying between the Delaware and the Hudson to 

183 



1 84 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

two of his friends, Lord John Berkeley and Sir 
George Carteret. The latter had been governor of 
one of the Channel Islands, a part of old Normandy 
and the home of the Alderney cows. It is named 
Jersey, which is only a corruption of Cassarea. In 
compliment to Carteret's loyalty, the Duke of York, 
who was to be the next king of England, named the 
new possessions which he had treacherously gained, 
" New Jersey." The wits afterwards dubbed him, 
when James II., the "ape of Caesar." In honor 
of Lady Elizabeth Carteret, the first comers under 
his rule, who were mostly from England, named 
their settlement Elizabethtown, or, as now called, 
Elizabeth. 

The people were granted a direct voice in the 
government, and the general political provisions 
were made with a liberality that attracted even more 
emigrants from the Eastern colonies than from 
Great Britain. At Shrewsbury, Middletown, and on 
other sites were soon thriving towns. One party 
coming from England made a home on the banks 
of the Passaic River and began the city of Newark. 
They set up a Congregational church, and declared 
that none but church members should be freemen 
of the town or have a vote. 

Difficulties arose between Governor Nichols 
of New York and the proprietors of New Jersey 
over land titles, and the settlers could not tell 



WILLIAM PENN AND THE JERSEYS. 1 85 

who was their true landlord. When Governor 
Nichols determined to form an independent govern- 
ment, the old governor and council of New Jersey, 
finding it impossible to enforce their authority, went 
over to England to appeal to the Duke of York, 
who declared the grants under the authority of 
Nichols to be void. 

The next year Lord Berkeley, discouraged at the 
management of affairs, sold his one-half interest in 
the province for less than five thousand dollars to 
John Fenwick and Edward Billinge. When the 
new proprietors got in dispute about the division of 
their property, William Penn arbitrated the diffi- 
culty to the satisfaction of all. In 1675 Fenwick, 
with his family and a small company of Friends, 
sailed from London in the ship Gi'ifith, which 
means Great Faith. Entering the Delaware Bay, 
they landed on the banks of the creek. In gratitude 
to God and in love to the Prince of Peace, they 
named their settlement Salem. This was the first 
permanent English colony established in West Jersey. 
For a long time this region was spoken of as " The 
Jerseys," or, as people then pronounced it, " The 
Jarseys." Under the Friends, self-government and 
religious liberty were enjoyed and many industries, 
including manufactures, begun ; but the trouble 
about land titles never ceased until the proprietors 
put the two colonies under the British crown. 



1 86 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Then New Jersey was united in government to 
New York, not becoming a separate province until 

1738. 

In the building up of a country, the people are 
more important than institutions. In the making 
of a commonwealth, men are more than measures. 
Some writers pay attention only to the political 
side of history, telling us about princes and politi- 
cians, documents and charters, but seeming almost 
to forget race traits, characteristics, the influence of 
soil, natural features, and climate, and divine Provi- 
dence. Yet politics show but one side of man's 
nature, and the doings of kings and their favorites 
are often of far less importance than the people 
whom they serve or govern. In the making of a 
country like ours, we must not forget either the 
splendid quality of the different nationalities, or the 
social forces, or the ancestral influences that made 
our fathers what they were. It is well to remember 
that the women as well as the men, the mothers as 
well as the fathers, had a part in guiding the history 
which made our nation. 

In Europe the British nations were not the only 
ones engaged in the struggle for liberty. Indeed, 
in the seventeenth century, Holland led the van of 
freedom and in the little Dutch republic were 
trained many of the colonial leaders and founders 
of commonwealths. Indeed, we may say the major- 



WILLIAM PENN AND THE JERSEYS. 187 

ity of those who began the colonies north of Mary- 
land were educated and powerfully influenced in 
those Dutch United States which were the fore- 
runner in history of the American Commonwealth. 

Margaret Jasper, the daughter of John Jasper of 
Amsterdam, a Dutch lady, married Admiral Sir 
William Penn, the conqueror of Jamaica. Her son 
William Penn was born on Tower Hill, in London, 
October 14, 1644. He inherited the features and 
the disposition of his mother, as well as her native 
language and the noblest traits of the Dutch char- 
acter. His mother trained him, and instilled in him 
the best traditions of her race and country. He 
saw comparatively little of his father, who was most 
of the time at sea, engaged in the British naval ser- 
vice. In Chester cathedral, the visiting American 
can sit and worship to-day under British flags which 
once waved in the valleys of the Hudson and Dela- 
ware, and under the armor of Admiral Penn. 

The boy Penn was sent to Christ Church Col- 
lege, Oxford. George Fox, who taught doctrines 
very much the same as those of the Dutch Men- 
nonites, was at this time setting forth the views and 
founding the denomination of Christians called 
" Friends." Under the preaching of Thomas Lee, 
who was called a " Quaker," William Penn em- 
braced the peaceful doctrines of the Friends. He 
would not attend the college services, and was there- 



1 88 THE ROMANCE OE AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

fore expelled from the University; for all "chapel 
services " were then obligatory. His angry father 
next sent him to Paris, hoping that the impressions 
made by the Quaker preacher would be effaced in 
the gayety of the French capital. In Paris, Penn 
studied for a while under a professor, in the French 
Reformed church, and then travelled in France and 
Italy. When he came back to England, the dread- 
ful scenes of the plague in London made him very 
serious again. To overcome this state of mind, his 
worldly father sent him to Ireland, where in an in- 
surrection among the soldiers, at Carrick Fergus 
Castle, the admiral's son served in its suppression as 
a volunteer under Lord Arran. It was at this time 
that the portrait which represents William Penn, 
in armor, a young man of twenty-two, was painted. 
In Ireland, Penn again came under the influence of 
the Friends' preacher Lee, and suffered arrest at 
a " Quaker meeting." This experience again alien- 
ated his father, who relented when he found out 
how sincere in convictions his son was. 

Penn now began to write industriously in defence 
of his views and to obtain toleration in behalf of the 
Quakers. Charged with heresy, he was impris- 
oned in the Tower, where he wrote the book, " No 
Cross, No Crown." Again released and again im- 
prisoned, he penned, while behind bars, " The Great 
Cause of Liberty of Conscience Debated." 



WILLIAM PENN AND THE JERSEYS. 189 

The prison, as in all history, proved to be one of 
the best places for the making of good books, some 
of the world's noblest literature, including a large 
portion of the Bible, having been written behind 
bars by men who were convicts but not criminals. 
William Penn would have been a great man and 
well remembered in our day, even if he had done 
nothing more than write, but his prison experience 
made him a statesman also. Reflection led him to 
think that the dreams and plans of Sir Thomas 
More, author of the wonderful book called " Utopia," 
and of James Harrington, who penned " The Com- 
monwealth of Oceana," could be realized upon the 
solid earth. The cathedral exists in the brain, and 
the plans on paper, before delver, mason, roofer, or 
artist does his part. So in all ages, noble men, who 
are the architects of progress, have built up civiliza- 
tion in thought first, before they or others have 
actually begun by work of hand to realize it in 
substance. 

Sir Thomas More, the intimate friend of Erasmus, 
the Rotterdammer, had in his " Utopia," or Nowhere, 
written an account of an imaginary commonwealth 
in a distant island of the Atlantic, of which the 
manners, laws, and state of society were depicted as 
models worthy of English imitation. This political 
romance concerning " The Happy States of the 
Republic, and the New Island of Nowhere," written 



I go THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

in Latin and printed on the Continent, in 1516, ex- 
cited universal admiration. Except Venice on the 
waters and Switzerland in the mountains, republics, 
even when imaginary, had to be located out in the 
distant sea, the far Atlantic. 

James Harrington, born five years before the 
death of Shakespeare, was an Oxford student who, 
as soon as he had travelled in Holland, began to be 
interested in problems of government. He served 
in the Dutch war for freedom, imbibed republican 
ideas. He was much at The Hague, and familiar 
with the court of the Prince of Orange. He then 
visited Italy. Seeing how well republicanism, both 
in Holland and at Venice, had prospered, he became 
deeply interested in political science. On his return 
to Eneland, he wrote out his wonderful dream of 
the future called " Oceana." This book, by an en- 
thusiastic republican, is the description of an ideal 
republic, and is dedicated to Oliver Cromwell. 
Harrington's " Oceana " expresses his hope of that 
England to come which we, in our day, see and 
which is yet coming. It is full of fancy and of 
common sense, and cautiously written so as not to 
excite suspicion. In it we see a great deal of what 
is now commonplace and matter of fact, both in 
England and the United States of America. 

"Oceana" had a o;reat influence on the mind of 
William Penn, who determined to put the ideas of 



WILLIAM PENN AND THE JERSEYS. I91 

More and Harrington in practice. He went over 
to his mother's home land, becoming greatly inter- 
ested in federal government and the Dutch civiHza- 
tion. Returning, honored and trusted, he was 
called on to arbitrate and to gain much experience 
in settling the quarrels between Fenvvick and Bil- 
lynge, about their possessions in New Jersey. 
After his release from imprisonment and the pub- 
lication of his book on Liberty of Conscience, Penn 
travelled again through Holland and Friesland and 
in Germany. He talked with and preached to the 
Dutch in their own language, winning many con- 
verts to the doctrine of the Friends. In Friesland, 
he was struck with the democratic spirit of the people 
and the forms of their government, some of the 
features of which he afterwards introduced into 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 

Penn made a second missionary journey to the 
Continent in company with George Fox, Robert 
Barclay, and George Keith. Besides preaching to 
the Dutch in his mother's tongue, he visited Rot- 
terdam and many Holland towns, and went again 
into Frisia, where the language is so much like 
English. He also travelled through Hanover, Ger- 
many, and the Lower Rhine, making a special im- 
pression upon the Dutch and German Mennonites, 
the forerunners of the Friends. Those from Cre- 
feld had a large part in the settlement of German- 



192 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

t 

town in Pennsylvania. Those who came from 
Kircheim are noted as the first in America to de- 
clare it unlawful for Christians to hold slaves. 

Returning to his home, Penn pleaded with pen 
and tongue that England should grant the same tol- 
eration to the Friends which he had seen common 
to all sects in the Netherlands. But toleration for 
" Dissenters " then seemed as far off as ever and 
the future of English politics under King Charles 
II. hopeless. Penn therefore turned his eyes to 
America, determined to carry out his experiment 
of " a godly commonwealth " where conscience 
should be as free as in Holland, and where the ideas 
of prison reform which he had got from the same 
country, and the political privileges, making men as 
free as in " Free Frisia," should become reality. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PENn's experiment of a godly COxMMONWEALTH. 

PENN had been fined for not removing his hat 
in court, but he was released in time to be 
present at his father's death on September i6, 
1670. He then found himself in possession of a 
fortmie yielding an income of fifteen hundred 
pounds a year, besides a claim on the crown of 
fifteen thousand pounds lent by his father to 
Charles II. 

Knowing of this royal debt, and thinking it 
might be commuted in American lands, Penn 
applied, June 24, 1680, "for a tract of land in 
America north of Maryland, bounded on the east 
by the Delaware, on the west limited as Maryland, 
northward as far as plantable." This meant a terri- 
tory three hundred by one hundred and fifty 
miles in dimensions, very fertile and rich in mineral 
wealth. He suggested the name Sylvania, but the 
king added the name Penn in honor of the late ad- 
miral. Although Penn strenuously objected, he 
could not get the name changed, and so he became 
lord of Pennsylvania. 

193 



194 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

The " Groves of Penn," fronting on the Delaware 
River and containing nearly fifty thousand square 
miles, were in area as large as the whole of England, 
Penn now sent word to his friends in Scotland, Ger- 
many, and the Dutch states and encouraged the for- 
mation of the society of the " Free Society of 
Traders in Pennsylvania " and other adventurers. 
A party of pioneers was sent out in 1681. Penn 
then drew up a body of conditions and concessions. 
This constitution savored strongly of Harrington's 
" Oceana," but also borrowed very much that was 
actually in practical working in the Dutch repub- 
lic, especially in Friesland. It was democratic in 
the purest sense. A council of seventy-two was 
chosen by universal suffrage every three years, one- 
third retiring each year, after the Dutch manner. 
Having written to the Indians inviting their friend- 
ship, Penn sailed with a hundred of his comrades 
from Deal, in the ship Welcome, September i, 1682. 
Small-pox broke out on board, and one-third of 
the passengers died. This was a hundred years 
before Dr. Jenner and vaccination. 

When Penn landed at New Castle, Delaware, 
October 27, he was welcomed by the Swedes and 
Dutch already settled there, and received formal 
possession. 

The ceremonies of transfer, which took place in 
the presence of nearly the whole white population 




WILLIAM PENN TAKING FORMAL POSSESSION OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



EXPERIMENT OF A GODLY COMMONWEALTH. 1 95 

of Pennsylvania, who assembled as witnesses, were 
borrowed from the Dutch. A sod was cut from the 
ground with a spade and handed to WilHam Penn, 
significant of the fact that he was lord of the whole 
territory, owning the land and all that grew on it. 
Then a drinking vessel, filled with Delaware River 
water, was offered him, which signified that he owned 
the water as well as the bottom of the river. In the 
third place, a key of the fort was put in his charge, 
completing the transfer, and signifying that he had 
the right of holding both land and water by force. 

The Assembly met at once, and, on the 7th of 
December passed " The great law of Pennsylvania." 
This, one of the noblest of the colonial constitutions, 
showed that Pennsylvania was to be a Christian state 
on the model of the Friends, who had not a single 
musket among them, or firearms of any sort. Only 
one condition was made necessary for citizenship or 
office : namely, Christianity. All offices were elec- 
tive, and the general order was purely democratic. 
Monopolies were not allowed. The penalty of death, 
for all offences except murder, was abolished. 

Penn had great faith in the principles of arbitration. 
He believed that the Scripture exhortation, " Let the 
peace of God arbitrate in your hearts," could be car- 
ried out in practice, not only among individuals, but 
even between states. While in the Netherlands, he 
had been impressed with the unity, power, and peace- 



196 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

fulness of a republic in which there were manifold 
sources of authority. There were cities with their 
municipal charters, noblemen with their manors, 
states with their legislatures, and the general na- 
tional government at The Hague. Here was unity 
amid diversity — c phu'ibus uiium — besides social 
harmony among men of all kinds of religious belief, 
— Jews, Agnostics, Unitarians, Trinitarians, Lu- 
therans, Calvinists, Arminians, and Mennonites, liv- 
ing quietly in peace. Later on, having successfully 
carried out his principle in Pennsylvania, he wrote 
"A Plan for the Peace of Europe," in which he puts 
forth the idea of a great court of arbitration, like that 
which is being attempted in this our day, under 
the administrations of Presidents Cleveland and 
McKinley. Though the vision tarry, Penn was a 
true prophet, as well as a follower of the Prince of 
Peace, who took Jesus seriously. 

His frame of government for the white settlers 
havincr been formed, Penn o;athered the Lenni- 
Lenape aborigines, who belonged to the Algonquin 
group of tribes. These Delaware River Indians 
and others assembled under a great elm tree at 
Shackamaxon, the native name of the suburb of 
Philadelphia afterwards called Kensington. Fifty 
years of kind treatment at the hands of the Swedes 
and Dutch, both of whom had paid for their lands 
and traded honestly, had smoothed the way for the 



EXPERIMENT OF A GODLY COMMONWEALTH. l()J 

Friends, who had no trouble with their red brethren. 
Without any oath and with mutual frankness, a cov- 
enant of friendship was entered into, " never sworn 
to and never broken." For sixty years, so long as 
the Friends had control of the government, this com- 
pact was never violated. 

In Indian custom, the document, equivalent to 
our engrossed parchment record, with signatures 
solemnly attested by a great seal of wax held by 
ribbons, was a belt of wampum. This was handed 
to Penn with eloquent speeches and solemn cere- 
monies. It consisted of lono: stringrs of white shells, 
varied with three oblique bands of black. Wrouorht 
in the centre are two figures, of a bareheaded Indian 
and a white man with a hat on, who are clasping 
hands in token of friendship. The old tree grew near 
the banks of the Delaware, not far away from where 
the later "Free Quakers "and shipbuilders, Manuel 
and Jehu Eyre, launched the first gunboats for the 
Continental Congress. The monument on its site 
— for it was blown down in 1811 — stands near the 
great shipyard, in which the splendid steel battle- 
ships of, our modern United States navy have been 
constructed and launched by the Cramps. 

Penn laid out the capital city, according to a plan 
which he had borrowed from Babylon and had 
elaborated before leaving England. The streets 
were to run north and south and east and west. 



198 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Those between the two rivers, the Delaware and 
Schuylkill, were numbered in consecutive order, 
from F'ront or First Street to the Fourteenth or 
Broad, and beyond. Those running east and west 
were called after the trees of the forest. Chestnut, 
Walnut, Spruce, Pine, etc., and the fruits, Mulberry, 
Raspberry, etc. He named his new city Philadel- 
phia, or Brotherly Love, its motto being that of 
the first verse of the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews 
— Philadelphia Mancto, "Let brotherly love con- 
tinue." The city grew very rapidly, and within two 
years contained three hundred houses and a popu- 
lation of twenty-five hundred. People of the four 
British nations and Swedes, Germans, Dutch, and 
Swiss poured rapidly into the new province. Later 
on, with the coming of the Ulstermen, the population 
in forty-eight years, from 1701 to 1749, increased 
over twelvefold, from twenty thousand to a quarter 
of a million souls. 

At Germantown, settled by the Dutch and Ger- 
mans, mostly Mennonites, new industries were in- 
troduced, especially the making of wine, the working 
of silk, and the weaving of linen. The town seal 
consists of a clover leaf, on one lobe of which is a 
bunch of grapes, on another a distaff of fiax, and 
on another a spool of silk, with the motto, Vinnm, 
limun et tcxtrinum. Here lived Daniel Pastorius, 
then the most learned man in America. 



EXPERIMENT OF A GODLY COMMONWEALTH. 1 99 

Pennsylvania is sometimes called " The American 
German's Holy Land." Let us see why. To-day, 
as the tourist visits Heidelberg on the Neckar, or 
sails down the Rhine from Spires or Mannheim 
to Cologne, he sees many ivy-mantled ruins, which 
show how terribly Louis XIV. of France desolated 
this region during his ferocious wars. Angry at 
the Germans and Dutch for sheltering his hunted 
Huguenots, and at the British for deposing James 
n. and welcoming William HL of Holland, he 
invaded the Rhine Palatinate, which became for a 
whole generation the scene of French fire, pillage, 
rapine, and slaughter. Added to these troubles of 
war and politics, were those of religious persecu- 
tion ; for, according as the prince electors were 
Protestant or Catholic, so the people were expected 
to change as suited their rulers, who compelled their 
subjects to be of the same faith. In the middle 
ages, and until the Dutch changed it, the formula 
was €J2is rcgio, citjus rcligio, which meant that the 
prince ruled both land and conscience. Tired of 
their long-endured miseries, the Palatine Germans, 
early in the eighteenth century, fled to England. 
Under the protection and kindly care of the British 
government, they were aided to come to America. 
About five thousand settled in the Hudson, Mohawk, 
and Schoharie valleys in New York, and over twenty- 
five thousand in Pennsylvania, chiefly in the Schuyl- 



200 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

kill and Svvatara region between Bethlehem and 
Harrisburg. Later came Germans from other parts 
of the Fatherland, making colonists rich in the 
sturdy virtues of the Teutonic race. 

Though poor, these Germans were very intelli- 
gent, holding on to their Bibles and having plenty 
of schools and schoolmasters. In the little Men- 
nonite meeting-house at Germantown, on the i8th 
of February, 1688, they declared against the unlaw- 
fulness of holding their fellow-men in bondage, 
and raised the first ecclesiastical protest against 
slavery in America. In Penn's colony also the first 
book written and published in America against 
slavery was by one of these German Christians. 
Anthony Benezet, who was a Huguenot Quaker 
and a schoolmaster, wrote tracts on religious liberty 
and against negro slavery. These powerfully stim- 
ulated the mind of William Wilberforce of Eng- 
land, the great philanthropist who opposed the war 
with America, and pleaded for the emancipation of 
Catholics and the abolition of slavery. 

The Pennsylvania Germans also published the 
first Bible in any European tongue ever printed in 
America. It was they who first called Washington 
" the father of his country." In their dialect, still 
surviving in some places, made up of old German 
and modern expressions, some pretty poems and 
charming stories have been written. Tenacious in 



EXPERIMENT OF A GODLY COMMONWEALTH. 20I 

holding their lands, thorough in method, apprecia- 
tive of most of what is truest and best in our na- 
tion's life, but not easily led away by mere novelties 
and justly distrustful of what is false and unjust, 
even though called " American," the Germans have 
furnished in our national composite an element of 
conservatism that bodes well for the future of the 
republic. 

The central and western parts of Pennsylvania 
were later settled by Irish and Scottish people. 
Philadelphia grew so rapidly that at the end of colo- 
nial life, it was the largest and most important city 
in North America, the literary centre, and the place 
of the first beginning of schools for women. In its 
free atmosphere, Benjamin Franklin found his place 
of development. Here were the ablest lawyers, the 
first philosophic and scientific societies; here lived 
and worked the first American astronomer, Ritten- 
house; and here originated many first things which 
have so powerfully influenced the nation at large. 
In many other ways Philadelphia has been a pio- 
neer city. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

NEW SWEDEN AND DELAWARE. 

TN the era of discovery, Scandinavia and Italy 
A were the two maritime countries of Europe that 
helped to unveil America, yet neither possessed any 
part of it. Even little Denmark owned Greenland, 
a small continent by itself, but with only a habi- 
table strip of seacoast. 

Sweden had sent no explorers to America in the 
sixteenth century, though half a millennium before 
the Norsemen had made voyages across the Atlan- 
tic and had begun settlements in North America. 
From these, however, the governments of Norway 
and Sweden made no claim of territory, any more 
than did the crown of England claim the Pacific 
coast because Sir Francis Drake had visited it. 

The Dutch navigators first explored and mapped 
the coast of Delaware and entered its waters, giving 
their names to Capes May and Henlopen, which jut 
out from opposite points of land, forming the gate- 
way to the noble bay. The later name of the 
colony came from the river, in which Lord de la 
Warr, the captain-general of Virginia, had at one 



NEIV SWEDEN AND DELAWARE. 203 

time found shelter. The first actual settlement by 
De Vries, a Dutch commander whose name means 
"the Frisian," was made in 1630, near Lewes, where 
to-day is the great breakwater within which hun- 
dreds of ships and coasting vessels anchor for shel- 
ter during times of severe storm. De Vries' colony 
was destroyed by the Indians. 

Gustavus Adolphus, the noble king of Sweden 
and the great leader of the forces of Reformed 
Christianity during the Thirty Years' War, had a 
great desire to plant a colony in America, and as 
early as 1627 plans were perfected for this purpose. 
Soon he was obliged to lead his army across the 
Baltic Sea, and being kept long in the tented field, 
his American enterprises had to bide their time. 
Gustavus Adolphus was killed at the battle of Lut- 
zen in 1632, but his famous chancellor, Oxenstiern, 
carried out his lamented sovereign's desire. Peter 
Minuit entered the Swedish service, and in 1637, 
with a ship of war and a smaller vessel, he led a 
colony of Swedes and Finns, with their chaplain, to 
the Delaware River region, between Cape Henlo- 
pen and Christiana Creek. They bought land of 
the Indians and called the country New Sweden. 
By treaty, the land "ceded to the Swedish crown 
forever " extended from Christiana Creek to the 
falls of the Susquehanna River. At the mouth of 
the stream they built a fort and a house of worship, 



204 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

which was the first Lutheran church edifice on this 
continent. Their chief settlement, near the present 
city of Wihnington, was named Christiana, after 
the virgin Queen of Sweden. Minuit had to write 
the deed of transfer in Dutch, for none of the 
Indians understood Swedish. The savages made 
signature to the document with their marks or 
totems. 

A second company of immigrants from Sweden, 
under Colonel John Printz, came over in 1642. 
Their chaplain, Campanius, at once proceeded to 
learn the tongue of the Delaware Indians, and after 
a while preached to them the gospel. Luther's 
Catechism was soon translated, — probably the first 
Protestant book in an American dialect, — though 
it was not printed until some years later. In 1669, 
on the pretty green slopes of Wicaco, within the 
limits of the later Philadelphia and near the Dela- 
ware River, the original of the present octagon 
stone edifice, " The Old Swedes' Church," was built 
of logs. 

The Dutch considered the Swedes intruders, 
and built a fort at New Castle, five miles below 
them. In 1655 Governor Stuyvesant led an expe- 
dition, of seven ships with seven hundred men, 
from Manhattan into the Delaware, and took 
possession of the country. Most of the Swedes, 
some of them settling in New Jersey and some in 



NEW SWEDEN AND DELAWARE. 20 5 

Delaware, took the oath of allegiance to the Dutch 
republic. When, in 1664, the Duke of York con- 
quered New Netherland, he claimed Delaware as 
belonging to him, but afterwards sold it to William 
Penn, though Lord Baltimore also claimed it. It 
was considered a part of Pennsylvania, but had its 
separate Assembly, and until the Revolution was 
always spoken of as " the three lower counties on 
the Delaware." 

Most of the Swedes and Dutch remained under 
Penn's government, and were glad to do so. These 
Swedish Lutherans were the advance guard of a 
great host of Christian people in America who 
now number millions and are rich in churches, col- 
leges, schools, education, the religious press, and 
in works of charity and missionary zeal. The 
disciples of Luther who come to this country are 
from many lands and speak various languages, but 
English is usually the tongue of the second genera- 
tion in America. Within the present century a 
great host of Swedes and Norwegians have settled 
in the great Northwest. 

Geography was not a science especially culti- 
vated in Great Britain, and even the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society was not founded until 1830. Nor 
was surveying very accurately done. So long as 
kings gave away, on parchment, vast tracts of 
territory, mensuration was in a rude state. Land 



206 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

in gullies, swamps, stony areas, or not thought valu- 
able was often neglected. The settlers "stepped off " 
their ground or took lengths by means of poles, 
ropes, or harness reins. In the west country be- 
yond the coast, settlements were as yet unknown, 
but even in the region between the mountains and 
the sea-beach, there were many boundary disputes 
between the colonial governments. Not only this, 
but France, Spain, England, and the Netherlands 
had much trouble and contention over their various 
claims, and the alleged lines of demarcation. 

Some of the wars fouoht on the American con- 
tinent were over boundary lines, as many wars 
often are yet. While nations are greedy and ambi- 
tious, and some weak, and some strong, there will 
always be a tendency to " rectify the frontier " in 
ways not strictly righteous, — especially when it 
is uncertain on which side gold mines, or fisheries, 
or other sources of wealth may lie. The main 
trouble is that, usually, diplomatists sitting in easy- 
chairs in pleasant rooms prefer to settle such ques- 
tions over a table with maps and pencils, instead 
of having the work done by surveyors. From the 
days of Prince Henry of Portugal and King Fer- 
dinand of Spain, to our time of the Venezuela 
Boundary Commission and the Klondike line, these 
things have led to excitement and even war. 

William Penn, besides giving the United States 



NEW SWEDEN AND DELAWARE. 20/ 

of America other noted precedents and examples, 
showed how a boundary Une ought to be made, — 
not by closet geographers or greedy diplomatists, 
each one eager to overreach the other, but by 
actual surveyors working on the ground between 
the earth and the stars, with instruments of pre- 
cision and producing results wrought out by 
scholarly mathematicians. So, while courts and 
cabinets talked by the month, employed platoons 
of secretaries, over maps and documents, and 
fired bags of despatches at each other, the suc- 
cessors of William Penn rectified the blunder 
committed through royal ignorance of geography, 
and which had caused disputes for nearly a century. 
The boundary between Pennsylvania and Dela- 
ware was agreed upon by the proprietors to be 
the arc of a circle, drawn with a radius of twelve 
miles from the court house at New Castle on the 
Delaware to the Maryland border. Arrangements 
were also made for a boundary west, and commis- 
sioners were appointed to run the lines. This 
was in 1732, the year in which Washington, 
the surveyor and engineer, was born. Chancery 
suits were the chief result of the imperfect work 
of 1739 and 1750. Then other commissioners 
were appointed. The surveyors began operations, 
and spent three years in measuring the line sepa- 
rating Delaware from Maryland. 



208 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

The proprietors then selected the more skilled 
mathematicians, Messrs. Mason and Dixon, who 
verified the work of their predecessors, and ran 
the western line, beginning on November 6, 1 763. 
They were stopped by the Indians in the sum- 
mer of 1767, when 244 miles west of the Dela- 
ware, and only 36 miles east of the terminus 
they were seeking. Stones were erected at the 
intervals of a mile, and on every fifth stone, on its 
opposite sides, were engraved the arms of Lord 
Baltimore and William Penn. In 1782 the re- 
mainder of the boundary was completed and 
marked. This famous line became in the popular 
idea, especially in Europe, the demarcation between 
what later were known as the Northern and South- 
ern or between the slave and the free states. The 
line fixed by the Missouri Compromise in 1820, 
however, was at 36° 30', while that between Mary- 
land and Pennsylvania is at 39° 43' of north latitude. 

When Delaware became an independent state, a 
blue flag with white stars was adopted as the sign 
of sovereignty. This flag was humorously spoken 
of as resembling " a speckled blue hen," and the 
people " The Blue Hen's Chickens." Delaware's 
colonial history falls under that of Pennsylvania, 
but as a state, its war-ships were the very first to 
salute the stars and stripes afloat. Delaware led 
the thirteen states in adopting the Constitution. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

GERMANIC OR LATIN CIVILIZATION IN NORTH AMERICA? 

THREE great European powers struggled during 
two centuries for the control of North America. 
They were Spain, France, and Great Britain. So 
long as Spain was so fully occupied with South 
America, Mexico, and the West Indies, and espe- 
cially while her best armies were being beaten by 
the Dutch republicans in fighting for their inde- 
pendence, there was little likelihood of her making- 
good her claims to all America. 

On the north the French and their allies, the 
Algonquin Indians, gave the Eastern colonists much 
anxiety in their early days, and later led to greater 
military expeditions. One of the first combinations 
was the New Eno;land Confederation. For mutual 
defence, the four colonies of Massachusetts Bay, 
Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed a 
league which lasted over forty years. Maine and 
Rhode Island desired to join the Union, but the for- 
mer was refused because the worship of the church 
of England was maintained there, and the latter 
because religion was free. 

209 



210 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

It was the Plymouth men, who had lived under 
a federal government in the Dutch republic, who 
proposed this union. The model was evidently 
that of the States-General, both in detail and gen- 
eral procedure. 

In all federal governments, it is a vital principle 
that each state or represented body, large or small, 
have equal representation ; but where one state, in 
population or wealth, is equal or nearly so to all the 
others combined, there is danger that the large and 
wealthy state will be greedy of too much power. 
So it happened in the Dutch League of Seven 
States, where the resources and population of 
Holland were nearly equal to those of the other six 
states combined. Hence there was constant dan- 
ger from the ambition and power of one member of 
the confederacy that paid forty-eight per cent of all 
the taxes. 

The New England Confederacy was formed in 
1643, ^u^ i" practice the same evils were encoun- 
tered as in the Netherlands. Massachusetts was too 
large, and wanted things too much her own way. 
For about twenty years only did the Union have 
any real life, and it came to an end when Charles II. 
sent over Andros as governor, who trampled upon 
all law and carried out his master's wishes to per- 
fection. 

We shall see how, later, in 1690, after the mas- 



GERMANIC OR LATIN CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA? 211 

sacre of Schenectady, under Jacob Leisler, and in 
1740, at Albany, under Benjamin Franklin, further 
attempts at a union of colonies for mutual safety 
were made. 

In 1647 Peter Stuyvesant was sent out as gov- 
ernor of New Netherland. A man of great energy, 
he made one of the best of Dutch governors. He 
was then forty-five years old and in the prime of 
life. He had served in the West Indies, where in 
the attack upon the Spanish island of St. Martin 
he lost a leg. Patent spring limbs being then un- 
known, he wore a wooden substitute, and this being 
handsomely ornamented with studs of silver, he was 
often called "Old Silver Nails," or "Old Silver 
Leg." He had been living three years in Holland 
before he was appointed director-general of New 
Netherland. 

Soon after his arrival, he sent for Arendt Van 
Curler and took good counsel from him, and thus 
from the first treated the Indians with kindness and 
justice. Absolutely honest, not knowing what fear 
was, and intent on doing justice to all, he brought 
order into the colony. He was thoroughly faithful 
to his employers, conscientious in everything, and 
devoutly religious. He had a hot temper and strong 
will. 

Stuyvesant's other virtues were not of the typical 
Dutch sort. He ruled in an aristocratic spirit. 



212 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Without much faith in popular government, he 
sided with the political ideas which in Holland 
have always been opposed to democracy. The 
Dutch farmers and traders in New Netherland had 
been used to much more freedom in their native 
country than either the patroons or the governors 
wished to allow. Stuyvesant tried hard to check 
the growing liberal spirit, but the popular demand 
asserted itself. A council of nine men was elected 
to assist the governor and to say how taxes should 
be raised and the money disbursed. Thereafter 
popular liberty steadily broadened in New Nether- 
land. In this the Dutch were reasserting ancient 
rights ; for their doctrine of " no taxation without 
consent" is as old as the middle ages. It was the 
rock on which Philip II. stumbled, and which, fall- 
ing on Spain, nearly ground that proud Power to 
powder. 

While his countrymen were broadening and deep- 
ening in religious liberty. Old Silver Nails held to 
the sectarian bigotry which had brought Barneveldt 
to the block. He was severe upon the Quakers, 
though he was not so horribly cruel as the Massa- 
chusetts Puritans. He was angry because the 
Anabaptists flourished. He fined the Lutheran 
churchmen and their supporters. Yet all this was 
so totally different from the spirit of brave little 
Holland, that, by the very next ship after that which 



GERMANIC OR LA TIN CIVILIZA TION IN AMERICA ? 2 I 3 

brought the news of a Dutchman's shameful con- 
duct in imitating the kings and church lords of 
Europe, Stuyvesant was severely rebuked. He was 
given to understand that no man was to be perse- 
cuted for his faith, but that religious liberty must 
be the rule in New Netherland, as well as in the 
old country. From that time forth, there was no 
trouble in the colony to any law-abiding citizen, 
whatever his religious opinions might be. 

In other respects, Stuyvesant made a capital 
governor. Although in 1656 New Amsterdam had 
only a thousand inhabitants, it was as cosmopolitan 
as Greater New York now is. Though most of the 
people were Dutch, there were many Walloons and 
Huguenots, insular British folk of four sorts, and 
Continental Europeans of many kinds, — a new 
Europe in miniature. The laws had to be published 
in three languages, and there were from fourteen to 
twenty tongues spoken on Broadway, for the ships 
of many nations came into the harbor for trade. 
None better than the Dutch understood the advan- 
tages of this great gateway from the ocean into the 
continent. Much firmness and wisdom were neces- 
sary to govern such a variety of people, especially 
in a seaport where more strong drink was sold than 
was necessary for comfort. 

Stuyvesant also guarded against the encroach- 
ments of the Puritans in Connecticut upon the 



2 14 ^'^^ ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

limits of New Netherland, being most anxious, also, 
as a Christian magistrate, to keep the peace among 
white men in the presence of the Indians. Being 
peremptorily ordered to dispossess the Swedes on 
the Delaware, he captured the fort which the Swed- 
ish Governor Rising had taken in 1654, and took 
possession of the entire colony of New Sweden. 

Ten years later, it was the turn of the biters to 
be bitten ; for then the Dutch were themselves 
turned out by the British. By 1664 the English 
people in the Eastern colonies and in Virginia, who 
looked upon the Netherlanders as intruders, wanted 
to get them out and have English people in their 
place, while the British king was covetous of the 
rich land and splendid harbor which the Dutch had 
opened to civilization. 

The Duke of York, whom history can call little 
less than a buccaneer, who had already needlessly 
ravaged Portuguese settlements in Africa, was very 
anxious to distinguish himself by capturing New 
Netherland. Charles II. determined to seize the 
country ; but as he gave assurances to the Dutch 
government that he intended no such thing, and 
told many royal lies, the West India Company was 
lulled into security. As one of the great motives 
in founding the colony had been to weaken Spain, 
and as the Dutch had, as far back as 1648, humbled 
their great enemy and won their complete indepen- 



GERMANIC OR LATIN CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA? 21 5 

dence from the Spanish king, they paid little atten- 
tion to their American province. The defences 
were neglected. The fort fell into disrepair. There 
was a garrison of only sixteen soldiers in the bas- 
tions, and there was not a single man-of-war in the 
harbor. Knowing the weakness and unguarded 
condition of Manhattan Island, the Stuart king at 
once improved his opportunity. Although it was 
a time of profound peace, the British government, 
in August, 1664, sent Colonel Nichols, with a fleet 
of ships and about a thousand soldiers, who de- 
manded instant surrender. 

The brave Stuyvesant showed fight and refused 
at first to yield ; but finding few to second him, he 
appointed Domine Megapolensis and other citizens 
to treat with the British commander to secure pro- 
tection of life and liberty. Excellent terms were 
made, by which freedom of conscience, trade, and 
representative government were guaranteed. The 
province was named New York, and the city like- 
wise. Nichols at once sent for Arendt Van Curler 
to gain over the Iroquois Indians and to secure the 
frontiers, and took the good advice of this leader 
and statesman, 

Stuyvesant visited Holland to give account to 
the company of his stewardship, but came back to 
spend the remainder of his life on his farm, or 
" bowery," in that part of the city which still retains 



2l6 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION 

its name. At the time of the surrender, there were 
probably not over ten thousand white people in the 
whole region where now New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, and Delaware have now a population 
of fifteen millions. It is quite possible that one- 
half of the Netherlanders returned home, not liking 
English ways of government; so that in all New 
York there were probably not more than five thou- 
sand Netherlanders remaining. From these have 
sprung that excellent stock which has been so 
powerful in making New York the Empire State, 
and in helping to settle the West. Their de- 
scendants, among whom are so many heroes, 
legislators, authors, inventors, and men eminent in 
all the departments of life, have spread all over 
the Union. 

The English governor, Colonel Nichols, was a 
man of energy and good sense. After him came 
Francis Lovelace, who was not a particularly inter- 
esting character. When, in 1674, war broke out 
again between the Dutch and English, for the pos- 
session of the seas. Admiral Cornelius Evertse, fly- 
ing the flag of the republic, came into the harbor 
of New York and recaptured the city and province. 
Then, to the great joy of many inhabitants, followed 
a year of Dutch rule ; but the English Parliament 
compelled King Charles to cease war with Holland 
and to make peace. 



GERMANIC OR LATIN CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA? 21/ 

The region of New Netherland again came under 
English rule, and Sir Edwin Andros, a man of 
excellent private character, but of abominable politi- 
cal principles, was sent over to govern the whole 
region of country between Chesapeake Bay and the 
Penobscot River. Andros was one of those narrow- 
minded, hard-headed persons who can see nothing 
but the will of their master ; who can be more 
despotic than the despot himself, and whose private 
virtues seem all the more strange in contrast with 
their abominable public characters. 

The English people had long been outraged in 
their rights and liberties by their treasonable ser- 
vants, the Stuart kings. They had passed through 
a civil war and were suffering from the folly of the 
reaction brought about by the aristocracy and 
nobles. They were now getting ready to drive 
out one king, as they had already beheaded another. 
Furthermore, they were especially incensed at the 
buccaneer who had become their sovereign, and 
was now the ally and tool of Louis XIV., who had 
driven the Huguenots out of France. 

Andros seemed to have no idea but to out-Stuart 
the Stuarts. In New York he tried hard to set up 
the state religion of England, and to exploit the 
notions of his master, James II., in defiance of law; 
but he soon found that the cosmopolitan popula- 
tion of New York — Dutch, Scottish, Irish, Eng- 



2l8 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

lish, Welsh, German, and French — were united 
against him, as against a common enemy. These 
law-abiding people began to organize that long 
course of constitutional resistance to the pretensions 
and usurpations of Andros and the other English 
governors, — who were mostly intemperate, im- 
moral, and haters of popular liberty, besides being 
land speculators of a disreputable sort. The good 
people in the Dutch Reformed churches, by their 
tenacity to their religious convictions, by their up- 
holding of popular education, by their refusing in 
the Assembly to vote for the governor's measures, 
were especially active in saving freedom in that 
typical American colony which was destined to 
become the Empire State. 

Andros, in pursuance of the royal ideas which 
James Stuart was exploiting in England, continued 
the systematic extinction of charters and local gov- 
ernment. He punished the little town of Schenec- 
tady, by declaring a blockade and the stopping of 
its trade for nearly three months. His attempt to 
crush out the instincts of the liberty-loving colo- 
nists, though utterly vain, seemed to the Hugue- 
nots in New York wonderfully like the course of 
Louis XIV,, and to the Netherlanders like that of 

Philip n. 

When James \\. came to the throne, he deter- 
mined to take away the charters of Connecticut and 



GERMANIC OR LATIN CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA? 219 

Rhode Island, as his brother Charles II. had already 
done in the case of Massachusetts, and to unite all 
New England in one royal province. For violating 
the Navigation Laws, for welcoming the two judges 
who are called by English historians " regicides," 
for opposition to England's political church, for 
being too republican, Massachusetts was made a 
province of the crown like New York, and remained 
so until the Revolutionary War, Andros being the 
first royal governor. 

In order to bring the people of Connecticut 
directly under his control, Governor Andros, backed 
by a body of soldiers, went to Hartford to get the 
charter. The people resolved they would not give 
this up. Governor Andros discussed the matter 
with the legislature until it was dark. Then, as 
tradition avers, the charter was brought in and 
placed on the table. Suddenly the candles were 
blown out. When they were lighted again, no 
charter was seen. Some one, according to the 
story, had seized the document and hidden it in a 
hollow of an oak tree near by, which was ever after- 
wards known as " Charter Oak " and stood till 1856. 
Nevertheless, Andros declared that charter govern- 
ment in Connecticut was null and void. A marble 
tablet stands where the old oak tree did, and a piece 
of one of its boughs, in the form of a bell-yoke, is 
now in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. 



220 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Everything looked dark for freedom, from the 
Delaware to the Kennebec, and the descendants of 
men who had known liberty in Great Britain and 
the Netherlands were discouraged, when suddenly 
there came a gleam of light from Holland. Will- 
iam III., great-grandson of William the Silent, the 
pioneer of constitutional and religious freedom, had 
married into the Stuart family of England. His 
wife was the daughter of King James W. Having 
been invited by the leading men of England to come 
over with his army and take the throne in place of 
the ruler who had betrayed the nation, William set 
sail with his Dutch fleet and regiments. Of his 
fine army of fifteen thousand men, probably half 
were Huguenots. Landing at Torbay, he marched 
to London. Soon afterward his wife was made the 
Queen and he the King of England. From this 
time forth, to Christians outside the political church, 
life was less of a burden, though the free church- 
men had to study in Holland or Scotland, for Eng- 
lish universities were still shut to nonconformists. 

Parliament issued that great state paper which 
marks the revolution of 1688 as the beginning of 
modern parliamentary government, whereby almost 
all power is centred in the House of Commons, 
and Great Britain has become a republic, though 
still retaining the form of a monarchy. The Dec- 
laration of Rights, drawn up chiefly by Lord 



GERMANIC OR LATIN CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA? 221 

Somers, is modelled on the Dutch Declaration of 
Independence of 1581. Since 1688, English free 
churchmen have been able by persistent struggle to 
win their rights. The Puritan revolution in which 
Charles Stuart was executed as malefactor was 
justified, and not a few of the ideas and the hopes 
of Cromwell were carried out. Since 1688, also, 
many of the modern reforms, which had long existed 
in Holland, had become a part of English law and 
custom. 

When William III. crossed over to Ireland also, 
many hundreds of his Dutch and Huguenot soldiers 
settled down in Ulster. They, with civilians from 
Holland, introduced new industries and manufact- 
ures, the raising of flax, the making of fine textiles, 
and of that renowned Irish linen which soon brought 
wealth to the Emerald Isle. Ulster " County" became 
a garden of intelligence and thrift, and a school for 
the cultivation of the noblest virtues that adorn hu- 
manity. Here were bred the ancestors of possibly 
ten million Americans and hundreds of men and 
women who have been leaders in American history. 

James II. never regained office in England and 
his grandson Charles Edward, known in England 
as "The Youno^ Pretender" and in Scotland as 
" Bonny Prince Charlie," attempted, in 1744, with a 
large fleet and French force to invade England, but 
a storm destroyed both his ships and his pl:in . ^:i 



222 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the next year he landed in Scotland. The High- 
landers rose in his favor and won several victories 
over the royal troops ; but at the battle of Culloden, 
April 1 6, 1746, his army was destroyed and with 
it the last hope of the Stuarts, whose line became 
extinct in 1S07. This battle broke up Gaelic feudal- 
ism and the clan system in Scotland. The High- 
landers were enlisted as soldiers in the British army, 
or scattered all over the world, large numbers com- 
ing to America. From this time forth, the bagpipe 
was heard and the gay Gaelic dress of tartan plaid 
seen in other lands. Armed with virtues nourished 
beside the loch, under the granite ben and in the 
glens, on moor and turf, and heather and gorse, the 
Scotsman went forth to do most nobly the world's 
work, and to help build the greatest of republics. 



CHAPTER XX. 

GOVERNOR LEISLER, THE HUGUENOTS, AND THE ROYAL 

WARS. 

WHEN the people of the colonies heard of the 
revolution in England, they at once made 
movements to regain law and freedom. In New 
York, on May 31, 1689, Jacob Leisler, a German 
or Huo-uenot commissioner of the Court of Admi- 

O 

ralty, took the fort on Manhattan Island, declared 
for the Prince of Orange, and planted six can- 
non within the fort, from which the place was ever 
afterwards called " The Battery." A committee of 
safety was formed which invested Leisler with the 
powers of a governor. When, however, a despatch 
arrived from the authorities of Great Britain, directed 
"to such person as, for the time being, takes care 
for preserving the peace, and administering the laws 
in his majesty's province in New York," Leisler, 
considering himself governor, dissolved the com- 
mittee of safety, and organized the government 
throughout the whole province. There was divi- 
sion among the New Yorkers, The minority, 
being mostly the English aristocracy, were against 

223 



224 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Leisler, but the people in great majority were in sym- 
pathy with him. It was the old conflict between the 
few and the many, with " all the people " sure in the 
end to win. 

Louis XIV. of France aided, with his fleet and 
army, the refugee and pretender James Stuart, to in- 
vade Great Britain. This made the Dutch and Brit- 
ish once more comrades in arms, in a war ao^ainst the 
enemies of law and liberty. The Edict of Nantes, 
issued by Henry IV. of France, in 1559, which 
granted religious toleration, was revoked by Louis 
XIV. in 1685, and the French Christians of the Re- 
formed church were hunted out of France, grandly 
to the gain of America. Massachusetts, the Caro- 
linas, and New York profited most by getting these 
people of high character, culture, graces, and abili- 
ties. To the French refugees coming to New York, 
Governor Leisler gave a welcome and made provi- 
sion for them by purchasing land at New Rochelle. 
Here, in New York city, at New Paltz, and other 
places, these excellent people helped build up the 
noble commonwealth of New York. 

The echoes of the strife in Europe were quickly 
heard in American forests. Soon bes^an the first 
of several wars, royal rather than popular, which 
were destined to make New York the tramping and 
battle ground of armies and the region whence 
parties of Canadian French and savages should 



LEISLER, HUGUENOTS, AND ROYAL WARS. 225 

march to ravage the frontier settlements. New 
England's battles were to be fought mostly by sea. 

Jacob Leisler was probably among the very first 
of far-sighted men to see the necessity of union 
against the French, who represented the Latin idea 
of civilization, while the Dutch and British repre- 
sented the Germanic or modern idea of self-govern- 
ment. To him, the importance of a federation of 
all the colonies seemed vital. After plainly trying 
to get other governors to unite with him, Leisler, 
early in 1690, sent a small fleet against Quebec. 
From the very first New York was infused with 
that sentiment for union which she has shown in all 
political disturbances and wars throughout all her 
history. Very appropriately, on her soil, was held 
the first Congress to propose an elaborate plan of 
union. 

As soon as news of the English revolution reached 
Boston, where Andros lived, the people put their 
tyrant in prison and restored their self-government, 
which they maintained until a royal governor was 
sent over by the new king. Then, of Maine, New 
Hampshire, and Massachusetts, including Plymouth 
Colony, was made one royal province. 

What we call " King William's War," the be- 
ginning of a conquest which was to rage for over 
seventy years, broke out in 1689. It was only the 
cis-Atlantic part of a long struggle between Great 



226 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Britain and France to settle the ownership of India 
and North America. In Europe the bloody theatre 
of the fighting which was to last, with some intervals, 
until the battle of Waterloo was chiefly in the southern 
Netherlands, though at first in the Rhine Palatinate, 
On our continent the contest was to decide the 
question whether the colonists were to grow up under 
a Latin or a Germanic ideal of civilization. Usually 
represented as four distinct wars, the American 
phase of this prolonged campaign was in reality but 
one war, which was to end at the fall of Quebec, 

Until 1763 the French determination to get hold 
of America was as strenuous and persistent as the 
English, Frontenac, a relative of Madame Mainte- 
non, the mistress of Louis XIV,, and who had seen 
service in the Dutch and Italian wars, had been ap- 
pointed governor-general of Canada in 1672. He 
built Fort Frontenac where Kingston, Ontario, now 
stands. He assisted the exploring expeditions of 
La Salle, Marquette, and Joliet in the Mississippi 
valley. When, in 1682, the governor was recalled, 
the colony in Canada almost fell into ruins. In 
1689 he was sent back again. 

Almost at once the whole continent seemed to 
feel the maoic of Frontenac's iron hand. Within a 
few months, his sailors had destroyed the English 
fleet in Hudson's Bay and invaded Newfoundland, 
His raiding parties ravaged the Iroquois territory 



LEISLER, HUGUENOTS, AND ROYAL WARS. 227 

and captured or burned Pemaquid, Casco, Salmon 
Falls, and Haverhill in New England and Sche- 
nectady in New York. Frontenac's courage and 
activity were marvellous. For several years it looked 
as if the fallen fortunes of France in America were 
to be restored. His method of terrorizing the 
whole colonial frontier, from Maine to New Jersey, 
was to send out small bands of French and Indians 
to surprise and shoot down the settlers in the field 
and burn their villages. 

In 1690 Haverhill was the frontier town in Mas- 
sachusetts. The Indians attacked the town and 
carried off as captives two women and a boy. On 
the way to Canada, while the savages were asleep, 
Mrs. Hannah Dustin succeeded in killing her cap- 
tors with their own tomahawks and returned to the 
settlement with ten scalps. On the 9th of Feb- 
ruary, 1690, a party of over two hundred French and 
Indians surprised Schenectady, New York, at mid- 
night. They slaughtered the Connecticut soldiers 
in the fort and the Dutch people in the village, 
sixty in all, taking nearly as many prisoners. They 
then burned the houses and escaped to Canada. In 
our day many a " mossy marble " and roadside 
memorial tells of the colonial pioneers of the border, 
slain at their ploughs or in the field by invisible 
gunners, killed in their homes by French or red 
men, or " captivated by the Indian salvages." 



228 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

A hard-drinking Englishman, named Sloughter, 
was appointed the royal governor of New York. 
On his arrival, Leisler refused to surrender the fort 
and government, until convinced that Sloughter 
was the regularly appointed agent of the king. 
Those who hated Leisler seized this opportunity 
of having him and Milborne, his son, imprisoned. 
After a short and absurd trial, they were con- 
demned, and the governor, when drunk, signed an 
order of execution. On May i6, 1691, Leisler 
and Milborne were hanged on the spot east of the 
Park in New York city, where stands the Tribune 
building, opposite which are the statues of Benja- 
min Franklin and Nathan Hale and near which 
the figure of Leisler may yet come to resurrec- 
tion in bronze. The outrageous act of the king's 
agent was disapproved. \\\ 1695, by an act of 
Parliament, Leisler's name was honored, indemnity 
was paid to his heirs, and the remains of these 
victims of judicial murder were honorably buried 
within the edifice of the Reformed Dutch church. 
No unprejudiced historian can but honor Leisler, 
the lover of union, and the champion of the people's 
rights. 

During King William's War, the colonists of 
Massachusetts sent an expedition, which captured 
Port Royal and Nova Scotia, then called Acadia. 
They also made an attack on Quebec, which, how- 



LEISLER, HUGUENOTS, AND ROYAL WARS. 229 

ever, was brilliantly repulsed under Frontenac. 
Louis XIV. was so much pleased over this event, 
that he had a medal struck in honor of the French 
victory. Peace was finally made in 1697, by the 
envoys of Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, 
and the United Netherlands, who met in the sum- 
mer palace of the Dutch stadholder at the little 
village of Ryswick near The Hague. A grand 
partition of the continent of America among three 
Powers was temporarily agreed upon. 

The British people were not well pleased with 
the Peace of Ryswick. They grumbled and de- 
clared that the only benefit which they had re- 
ceived, for all their expenditure of blood and money 
on the European continent, was the acknowledg- 
ment by the French of William III. as King of 
England. Yet the British government had spent 
very little treasure, and sent but few men to 
America, during King William's War, the colonies 
having done almost all the fighting. 

Such a peace could not be permanent. Five 
years later, the strife broke out afresh. This time 
it was called in America " Queen Anne's War," 
after Queen Anne of England. It lasted from 
1702 to I 71 3. Deerfield, in Massachusetts, was at- 
tacked by red and white Canadians. The sun 
rose on a thriving village one morning and on 
the next lighted up a level waste of ashes. The 



230 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Eastern colonies recaptured Port Royal and named 
it Annapolis, in honor of the queen. In the 
attempt, in 171 1, to take Quebec, the expedition 
under Sir Harrenden Walker encountered stormy 
weather and suffered from the ignorance of the 
pilots. The ships were wrecked, and over a thou- 
sand lives were lost, the whole affair ending in 
disaster. 

In the South the people of the Carolinas were 
attacked by the Tuscarora Indians, who had evi- 
dently been urged on by the Spaniards. In one 
night, near Roanoke, they massacred a hundred 
and thirty-seven white settlers and seemed inclined 
to drive the pale faces entirely off the soil. Gov- 
ernor Craven of South Carolina at once appointed 
Colonel John Barnwell, an Irishman, to take ven- 
geance on the savages. Gathering a body of six 
hundred white and several hundred allies, all of 
them well used to woodcraft, and able to subsist 
in the forest without provision trains, " Tuscarora 
John " drove the hostile warriors before him. He 
compelled them to fight at a disadvantage with 
men who could stand up behind trees and use 
all the red men's tricks against themselves. Then 
besieQ:inor them in their fortified castle, Barnwell 
compelled the braves of this once mighty tribe to 
surrender. After one thousand of their fighting 
men had been killed, the shattered remnant of 



LEISLER, HUGUENOTS, AND ROYAL WARS. 23 1 

the Tuscarora tribe was compelled to leave the 
old hunting grounds and to come north into New 
York. In 171 3 they settled in the region of 
Cayuga Lake, joining the confederacy of the five 
Iroquois tribes, which were hereafterwards known 
as the Six Nations. 

No other events of importance occurred during 
this war, which Vv'as concluded in 171 3, after heavy 
fighting in the Netherlands, in which the Duke 
of Marlborough made his great fame. By the 
Treaty of Utrecht Acadia now became a part of 
Great Britain and was named Nova Scotia. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE MOHAWK VALLEY AND THE PALATINE GERMANS. 

DURING the interval of peace from 171 3 to 
1744, there was a westward movement of the 
colonists from the older coast settlements. Pioneers 
from eastern and central Massachusetts occupied 
the region of the Berkshire Hills. In Pennsylvania 
the Palatine Germans settled the region between the 
Delaware and Lehigh and the Susquehanna. New 
York west of Schenectady was opened to settlement. 
In the Mohawk valley, Hendrich Frey from Zurich, 
Switzerland, had made his home west of the Pala- 
tine Bridge before 1700. After 1710, thousands of 
Germans from the Rhine Palatinate, who had left 
their fields and vineyards, gladly entered New York 
as the new land of promise on the Livingston 
Manor, and, later, by the Schoharie and Mohawk, 
becoming good Americans. 

These Germans were at first very poor, but 
whether of the Lutheran or of the Reformed 
churches they were devout God-fearing people of 
high principle. They were especially tenacious of 
personal liberty, just as their Teutonic forefathers 

232 



THE MOHAWK VALLEY AND PALATLNE GERMANS. 233 

were. Those who tried to play the Roman Csesar 
over them soon found out their folly to their own 
cost. All know how their tenacity and courage 
were splendidly shown at the battle of Oriskany, 
the most bloody and severely contested, and by 
some thought to be the decisive battle of the Revo- 
lution. Not all Americans, however, are familiar 
with the fact that through the Palatine German, 
Zenger, the freedom of the press in America was 
first won. 

The fur trade received a tremendous stimulus, 
when, in 1722, the British flag was unfurled by 
Governor William Burnett at Oswego, which was 
the first English outpost on Lake Ontario. Burnett 
encouraged bold young men from Albany and the val- 
ley settlements to penetrate to Niagara and beyond. 
These sturdy traders were ever alert, whether on 
water or land. They could either paddle their 
canoes or carry them from stream to stream. Their 
outfit of manufactured articles was exchanged for 
cargoes of peltry. 

In 1727 a regular fort was built at Oswego, and 
then began the development of the American com- 
mercial traveller, the prototype of the smart, well- 
dressed, and brainy " drummer " of to-day. Instead 
of riding with thousand-mile tickets in express trains 
and palatial sleeping-cars, having sample bags and 
trunks, and stopping in comfortable hotels in which 



2 34 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

to show their wares, these colonial pioneers of trade, 
full of courage, address, and rich in resources, used 
the birch-bark canoe and the pack-horse. They 
carried their hardware, dry-goods, and ornaments out, 
and their bundles of furs in, so that Albany became 
the headquarters of that fur trade in America, as 
London and Amsterdam were in Europe. 

It was in 173S, the year that King George III. 
was born, that Sir William Johnson began his 
activities as an Indian trader, and aided in the 
further development of the Mohawk valley, the 
natural highway to the great West. Lieutenant 
John Butler, who had been in the ill-fated expedi- 
tion against Quebec, had already settled with his 
two sons near the later Johnstown. In 1740 John- 
son was appointed head of the Indian department. 
The Butlers and Johnson were Irishmen, with the 
wit and abilities of their race. A few years later 
came the Campbells and other Scotsmen, who settled 
at Cherry Valley. Johnson continued the work so 
nobly begun by Arendt Van Curler, the founder of 
the peace policy with the Iroquois. He learned 
their language, treated them with justice and kind- 
ness, won their friendship, and made them perma- 
nent friends of the British. 

By the Treaty of Utrecht, it was declared that the 
Five Nations were subject to the dominion of Great 
Britain. The English interpreted this to mean that 



THE MOHAWK VALLEY AND PALATINE GERMANS. 235 

the hereditary territory of the Iroquois and all their 
conquests westward to the Mississippi River were 
British property. This the French disputed, and at 
once there began a struggle for the possession of 
the Ohio valley. The Virginians opened a road 
over the Blue Ridge Mountains and petitioned that 
a fort be built on Lake Erie. New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Virginia proceeded to strengthen their 
alliance with the Iroquois by a new covenant at 
Albany, the ancient place of treaties. For rum, 
money, and presents, the red men agreed to cede to 
the English all the lands west and north of Lake 
Erie. 

The French, having been greatly vexed because 
their trade with the Indians was intercepted at 
Oswego, now began to think of fortifying .Niagara. 
They also pushed up Lake Champlain, and in 1731 
built Fort Carillon at Crown Point. This act 
alarmed the people of Massachusetts even more 
than those of New York. The French also tried 
to lure away the Iroquois from their allegiance to 
the English ; but " the covenant of Corlaer " was not 
easily broken, and in 1744 the Indians came to 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and again confirmed their 
former concessions in a new treaty. By this time, 
the French on both sides of the ocean were irritated 
and ready to take up arms again in what is known 
as " King George's War," which lasted from 1744 to 
1748. 



236 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

The greatest event of King George's War was 
the organization of an expedition in Massachusetts 
led by Colonel Pepperell of Maine, who, with several 
thousand farmers and fishermen of New England, 
captured the great French fortress of Louisburg on 
Cape Breton Island. This they did with the help 
of a British fleet under Sir Peter Warren. This 
victory gave tremendous encouragement to the peo- 
ple of the Eastern colonies. 

During these four years the New York people 
were too busily engaged with their governors in the 
contest for liberty to pay much attention to the Ind- 
ians, and so their frontier was opened to the raids 
of the Canadians, red and white. The king's agent, 
Clinton, wished to govern without giving account 
to the Assembly or to the tax-payers, while the peo- 
ple were determined to have a free press, reason- 
able rights in raising and disbursing taxes, and a 
voice in directing the policy of the colony. They 
felt that to win their rights was even more impor- 
tant than repelling savages. The descendants of 
those who had made the Dutch republic, where " no 
taxation without consent " was the rule and where 
resistance to despotic government had been exalted 
into a principle, were reinforced by all lovers of lib- 
erty in New York, whether of Huguenot, Scottish, 
Irish, Welsh, or German blood. Their steady love 
of law in opposition to lawless governors, which 



THE MOHAWK VALLEY AXD PALATLNE GERMANS. 237 

continued down to the Revolution, showed that 
New York was leading all the colonies in outgrow- 
ing the colonial spirit. 

It was these New Yorkers who took the first step 
which led to separation from the trans-Atlantic 
country, whose rulers seemed to refuse to learn 
how colonists ought to be governed, — especially 
colonists who had been bred in the spirit not of 
the monarchy and state church of England, but of 
republican Holland. They did indeed lose, by 
Indian attacks, the village of Saratoga and some 
farms and colonists, but they won their freedom 
against the governors who so steadily misrepre- 
sented the spirit of English law. 

In November, 1733, John Peter Zenger, who as 
a boy had come over in the Palatine emigration 
and learned printing from Bradford in Philadelphia, 
established The New York Weekly Journal. The 
next year, having criticised the king's foolish repre- 
sentative. Governor Cosby, the latter had his critic 
thrown into jail. James Alexander Hamilton, of 
Philadelphia, who had come from Scotland to enjoy 
more freedom in William Penn's colony, and who 
first purchased Independence Square for the erec- 
tion of the State House, in which the Liberty Bell 
hangs, came on to New York. At his own ex- 
pense he defended Zenger and secured his acquit- 
tal. Thus one of the greatest of all victories in 



238 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

behalf of law and freedom, ever won in this conti- 
nent, was secured. 

In 1747 Governor Clinton, following Cosby 's 
blunder, declined to account to the Assembly for the 
manner in which he distributed " the money of the 
crown," i.e. the taxes paid by the people of New 
York. He forbade Parker, the public printer, to 
publish the address and remonstrance of the Assem- 
bly against the executive encroachments of power. 
Parker, refusing to obey Clinton, stood by the peo- 
ple and the Assembly, and printed the address in 
which they asserted their rights. On the same day 
on which, thirty-six years afterwards, the British 
and Hessians evacuated Manhattan Island, Clinton 
declared to the representatives of the people of New 
York that their "grasping for power, with an evi- 
dent tendency to the weakening of the dependency 
of the province on Great Britain ... is of most 
dangerous example to your neighbors." This was 
true. The action of New York strongly influenced 
the other colonies to uphold ancient law and freedom. 

Sir William Johnson's activity along the frontier 
greatly improved matters and prevented the French 
and Indians from winning further advantages by 
their marauding parties. In the middle of July, a 
conference was held at Albany, at which Governor 
Shirley and the Massachusetts commissioners were 
present. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE SCOTCH-IRISH EMIGRATION. 

THE Pilgrims, the Huguenots, and the Scotch- 
Irish were ahke in one respect. They were 
doubly colonists. They had had two homes before 
comino^ to their third home in America. 

Next to England, Scotland and Ireland furnished 
the laro-er number of colonists in America, before 
the Revolutionary War. Where people from the 
Continent by thousands and Englishmen by myri- 
ads, the Scottish and Irish came by hundreds of 
thousands. At the Revolution they numbered 
nearly one-half of the population of the thirteen 
colonies. Without the Scotch-Irish, we should 
never have had the country that we have now. 
Not only did they equal in numbers all other na- 
tionalities from Europe, but in the solid qualities 
that make up manhood and citizenship, it is doubt- 
ful whether they have had any superiors. 

In the early Christian ages, both Scotland and 
Ireland, but more especially the latter country, per- 
formed an important part in Christianizing Europe. 

239 



240 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Ireland led all Western countries, both as the seat of 
Christian light and knowledge and in missionary 
activities in other countries. The greatest saint of 
the island, the son of a patrician and deacon named 
Calipurnius, was not Irish or Romish, nor was his 
nariie Patrick. Yet his was a character whom all 
Christians and good men of every age and creed 
honor. He was a Catholic Christian, long before 
the later disputes between Germanic and Latin 
Christianity divided Christendom, and before the 
names of Romanist and Protestant were heard of. 
After his death, his disciples continued his noble 
work. 

The Keltic Irish, who have come so largely into 
the United States, and mostly in the present cen- 
tury on account of famine and troubles in their own 
country, have suffered many wrongs and sorrows at 
the hands of English monarchs, lords, and law- 
makers. Before the year 1772, only a compara- 
tively small number of people from the southern 
countries of the Emerald Isle came to America. 
The ereat emiorration of three hundred thousand or 
more people from Ireland before 1750 was from 
Ulster Province, which has a history which may well 
be called one of the romances of colonization. 
This ancient division of Erin has in it nine coun- 
ties, in which are many hills and bogs and much 
worthless land, yet good colonists made it one of 



THE SCOTCH-IRISH EMIGRATION. 24 1 

the fairest and richest portions of the earth, and this 
within one or two generations. 

Queen Ehzabeth, hke other Enghsh sovereigns, 
had attempted to settle Enghsh colonies in Ireland, 
but without much success. In the time of James 
Stuart, two noblemen of Ulster rebelled. The king- 
confiscated their estates, giving back the bogs, fens, 
and poor land to the tenantry, but saving the best 
soil, about five hundred thousand acres, for Scottish 
colonists. These came over by the thousands, so 
that by 1641 fifty per cent of the population of 
a million and a half people were Scottish peo- 
ple, whose numbers throughout the century were 
augmeftted by the persecuted Covenanters from 
Scotland. Before 1700 there were, besides these 
Scotch-Irish people and their children, many thou- 
sands of English and Welsh people, as well as 
Huguenots and Dutchmen who had accompanied 
Kine William. Thus a mixture of the best races 
of the world had already begun, forming the new 
man in history, the Ulsterman, usually called 
" Scotch-Irish," though more exactly a product of at 
least five of the races which led in civilization. In- 
troducing improved agriculture and the industries 
of Holland and France, they made of the wilderness 
a garden and of Ulster a hive of industry. 

Greed and bigotry, however, nearly ruined this 
wonderful colony, and America again profited by 



242 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the foolishness and wickedness of Enoland's state- 
church bigotry and the greed of her avaricious 
people. The repressive legislation of Parliament de- 
stroyed the Irish woollen industry and stopped the 
looms. This left twenty thousand intelligent arti- 
sans out of employment. These, by crossing the 
Atlantic, began that systematic emigration which 
brought from Ireland a third of a million of the 
best sort of colonists to the American shores to 
find, like the Pilgrims, a third home. Not satisfied 
with industrial oppression, the British government 
in 1704 passed a Test Act which, like Queen Eliza- 
beth's laws, was equally severe against Calvin ists 
and Catholics. Most cruelly and brutally was this 
Test Act enforced by Protestant state churchmen 
under Oueen Anne and the Hanoverian kinoes. 

From this year, 1704, until our Revolution, all 
classes of people from the north of Ireland, who 
refused to live under such oppression and bigotry, 
crossed the ocean to America. Indeed, it was hard 
to find ships enough to bring them over. In Phila- 
delphia ten or twelve thousand of these splendid 
builders of a nation would come in a single year. 
Sometimes two or three ships would arrive in a 
day. The exodus was unusually great after 1720. 

Yet as if the oppressed Irishman had not suffered 
enough, the system of eviction, which for over a 
century has cursed Ireland, began only three 



THE SCOTCH-IRISH EMIGRATION. 243 

years before the battle of Lexington. The abomi- 
nable system of raising the rents and basing the 
increase on the value of improvements was put into 
force in 1772. At least thirty thousand people, 
hating the very name of England and especially of 
English landlords, left the Emerald Isle, and within 
two years came to America. Most of these emi- 
grants were not poor bog-trotters or potato-eaters 
who had lived in hovels, but were industrious, well- 
educated, thrifty, virtuous people of faith and char- 
acter. Of this great host, many came to New 
England as early as 1715, and probably as many as 
fifty thousand in all. Twice as many entered the 
Southern colonies, but the greater majority came to 
Pennsylvania and the middle region, whence, grad- 
ually, they scattered into all the colonies. At the 
breaking out of the Revolutionary War, the colo- 
nists from Ireland numbered not very far from one 
million people, a majority being Covenanters or 
"Scotch-Irish," that is, Scottish-English- Huguenot- 
Dutch-Irish, a splendid composite. In all the thir- 
teen colonies, there were, in 1775, not quite three 
million souls, of which about one-half were south of 
Mason and Dixon's line, and one-half north of it. 

A great volume would be needed to tell the in- 
fluence and results of this, the largest emigration 
to America. It was not very romantic for either 
Great Britain or Ireland, any more than for France 



244 ^^^ ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

or Germany, to lose so large an elect portion of 
their population ; but it is a large element in the 
romance of the colonization of America. The 
people of this composite stock were of splendid 
physical vigor and rich in intellect and character. 
Their good works are especially seen in education, 
to say nothing of religion, learning, enterprise, and 
political genius. Almost all the schools and col- 
leges in the Southern colonies before the Revolu- 
tion were of their founding, and much the same 
may be said of the Middle states. In these insti- 
tutions were trained many of the leaders of the 
Revolution, — warriors, statesmen, men of foresight 
and leadership. 

I frankly confess that, at the Centennial Exposi- 
tion at Philadelphia in 1876, nothing, in all that 
gathering of the world's product of mind and hand, 
so impressed me as the library of books written by 
the graduates of Princeton College, which had been 
first begun by the Scotch-Irish in a log cabin. The 
majority of the patriots in the Continental armies, 
outside of the Eastern colonies, were from these 
people. In Hanover, Middletown, Westmoreland, 
Fort Pitt, and Chester counties in Pennsylvania, 
and at Mecklenburg, North Carolina, in 1774 and 
1775, they were the first to declare for indepen- 
dence. 

Many pages of this book would not sufKice to 



THE SCOTCH-IRISH EMIGRATION. 245 

print the long list of thousands of eminent men 
from this body of colonists. The names of one-half 
of the presidents of the United States, of vice-pres- 
idents, senators, representatives, cabinet ofificers, and 
foreign envoys of the United States by the hun- 
dreds ; of governors, civil and military officers in the 
colonies and states, by the thousands ; of George 
Clinton, William Livingston, Thomas McKean, 
Richard Caswell, Edward Rutledge in the colonies ; 
of fourteen of the fifty-five signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence ; of Generals Knox, Sullivan, 
Stark, Montgomery, Wayne, Howard, Campbell, 
Morgan, Pickens, Clarke, in the Revolution ; of 
Oliver Hazard and Matthew C. Perry ; of heroes on 
both sides in the Civil War to be counted, as officers 
by the thousands, as privates by tens of thousands, 
would be in the list. No romance of colonization 
could ignore this mighty movement. In all our 
country's history no fact is more apparent. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

WASHINGTON, THE COLONIAL FRONTIERSMAN. 

THE dynastic and Indian wars, in which the colo- 
nists had been compelled to take part, were as so 
many terms in a school by which the people were 
gradually educated into the ideas of union, with 
common interests, and one language, nationality, 
and destiny. The first wars, such as the " Pequot " 
and " King Philip's," or that with the Mohicans or 
the Tuscaroras, had been those of races, — between 
the white and the red men. Into the wars with the 
French, the colonists had been dragged because of 
European politics and their connections with the 
mother country, but none of them thus far caused a 
general movement, or had occupied the attention 
of all the colonies. Nevertheless, there was an 
increasing community of interests and dangers, of 
hopes and fears, which brought a good many colo- 
nists together to act as brothers in the same cause. 
Men now began to see that it would be a good 
thing if all the colonies could act together in unity. 
The " old French war," from 1 744 to 1 748, was 

246 



WASHINGTON, THE COLONIAL FRONTLERSMAN. 247 

really the war of the " Austrian Succession." Begun 
in Germany, it was ended in Europe, Asia, and 
America. The peace, which came without honor, 
settled nothing regarding the question at issue in 
America. Indeed, the treaty was so made that it 
guaranteed another war. This time, beginning in 
1755 and lasting until 1763, the strife was to break 
out first in America, before England and France 
should be involved. Instead of being; the " kine's 
war," it was to be one of the people. 

The situation, to one who wanted to see North 
America governed according to Anglo-Saxon ideas, 
was a serious one. Although there were twice 
as many people under English rule between Maine 
and Florida, as there were Frenchmen in all North 
America, yet the French possessed the two largest 
and longest rivers of the continent, — the St. Law- 
rence with its great lakes and tributaries, and the 
Mississippi River with its many branches. With 
only two or three " carries," a canoe, or a fleet of 
canoes, could move swiftly by water from Quebec 
to the Gulf of Mexico. Between these two points 
the French had already built forts, by which they 
commanded the trade with the Indians. Their 
situations were so well chosen by the French en- 
gineers that, although ramparts and palisades have 
long since vanished, great cities and centres of 
trade stand on their sites. 



248 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

One of the first signs that the EngHsh and the 
colonists were waking up to their danger was the 
organization of the Ohio Company, for the purpose 
of planting settlements along the head waters of the 
Ohio River, in what is now western Pennsylvania. 
Their grant of land gave them five hundred thousand 
acres, between the Kanawha and the Monongahela 
rivers, in southern Pennsylvania and northern 
West Virginia. This region was then rightly 
called " the gateway of the West," because it controls 
the streams and valleys running out from New York 
and Pennsylvania toward the Mississippi valley. 
It was in the highest degree of strategic importance. 

Lawrence Washington, who had been educated in 
England, was made the chief manager of the com- 
pany. Lawrence was the older brother of George. 
He had served under the British admiral Edward 
Vernon in the West Indies, taking part in the bom- 
bardment of the Spanish ports of Porto Bello and 
Cartagena. He had brought home with him a 
Dutch soldier, Jacob Van Braam, who became 
George Washington's military instructor. He 
named the estate, left him by his father, Mount 
Vernon. While occupied in frontier business, 
Lawrence secured the appointment of his brother 
George, then only nineteen years old, as assistant 
adjutant-general of Virginia with rank of major. 
Then " old Van Braam " and Adjutant Battaile Muse 



WASHINGTON, THE COLONIAL FRONTIERSMAN. 249 

trained the young man to his duties. To Lawrence 
Washington belongs the honor of the initiation of 
the settlement of the Great West. 

The French did not wait to see, but as soon as 
they heard, what the English were doing, they sent 
surveyors, engineers, and soldiers into the Ohio 
country and began building a new line of forts, from 
Lake Erie to the junction of the two streams that 
form the Ohio River. This aroused Governor Din- 
widdle, of Virginia, to maintain the English claims, 
which were based on direct purchase of the Ohio 
valley from the Iroquois Indians, who, as lords of 
the soil, having conquered it from the western tribes, 
had sold it to the whites. 

Lawrence Washington died in 1752, but Din- 
widdle selected his brother George, whom he or- 
dered to march three hundred miles, with his com- 
panions, over the mountains and the rivers and 
among the Indians, to a place called Venango, to 
give notice to the French that they were intruders 
and must be off. At this time Washington was 
twenty-one years of age, an athletic, well-knit young 
man, who had received a fair common school educa- 
tion, under his teachers, Messrs. Hobby and Will- 
iams. He understood surveying and horseman- 
ship, and had learned woodcraft and, what was most 
valuable, how to travel and live in the forest. On 
such journeys he used to wear the usual buckskin 



250 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

costume of the trapper and pioneer. On occasions 
of ceremony at home, his outer dress consisted of 
a long-skirted and red cloth coat having plenty 
of buttons, with dress sword and sash, knee-breeches, 
silk stockings, and silver-buckled shoes. Besides 
a long waistcoat with stock, ruffles, and lace cuffs, 
he put on a cocked hat. On his breast hung the 
polished brass gorget, such as all officers wore, 
showing his allegiance to the king. 

Two years' instruction under the Dutch officer, 
Jacob Van Braam, had perfected him in the manual 
of arms, and given him an insight into tactics and 
fortification. It is very probable that this veteran 
military instructor told Washington much about 
Maurice, Prince of Orange, the great soldier of the 
republic, who had done wonders with a very small 
army, who accomplished so much by the spade and 
earthworks, and who made engineering so large a 
part of the soldiers profession. It is certain that 
during all his military life, Washington, the sur- 
veyor-boy who became commander-in-chief, relied 
much on earthworks and engineering, and did as 
great wonders with his little army as Maurice had 
done with his. 

With only two or three companions, the young 
assistant adjutant of Virginia, in 1753, made the 
journey over the mountains and delivered his mes- 
sage to the French commander, but received no 



WASHINGTON, THE COLONIAL FRONTIERSMAN. 25 1 

satisfactory reply ; so that it became evident that 
mihtary force would have to be used to settle the 
question of ownership. 

From the first, Washington had wisely invested his 
earnings as surveyor in well-selected Virginia lands. 
This journey to what was then the almost unknown 
" far West " laid, the broader foundations of Wash- 
ington's fortune, and he became one of the richest 
men in the colonies, and able to serve without 
salary. He bought large areas of the Western terri- 
tory, which he believed would one day be occupied 
and made into homes for English-speaking people. 
Ever afterwards he was interested in the question 
of opening the West to civilization, by making high- 
ways on land and by water, so as to secure easy 
communication for travellers, and to brine the 
Western products to the Eastern markets. 

Thus what is called the " French and Indian 
War " was really begun in southwestern Pennsyl- 
vania, with Washington as the chief actor. The 
Ohio Company began building a fort at the junction 
of the two rivers, but the workmen were driven 
away by the French, who seized the place and 
named it Fort Du Quesne, after their naval com- 
mander, then governor of Canada, who had fought 
De Ruyter and the Dutch and Spaniards in the 
Mediterranean. Washington, now adjutant of the 
colony and lieutenant-colonel of a Virginia regi- 



252 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

ment, was sent as the governor's agent with power. 
In April, 1754, he set out with two companies for 
Mill Creek, arriving after a three weeks' rough jour- 
ney. After a skirmish and a siege in Fort Neces- 
sity, he surrendered to superior force, and returned 
home defeated, but with honor. 

On reaching Mount Vernon again, the name of 
Washington was upon every lip. He deserved 
high honors, but the way in which he was treated 
shows how foolish the British authorities behaved 
and how they alienated the Americans from loyalty 
to the kincr. It was made a rule that colonial 
officers, no matter what their rank, should be sub- 
ordinate to British officers of the same grade. The 
men who came over from Enorland, and knew next 
to nothinor about fiohtinof Indians in the woods, 
looked with disdain upon American troops, a folly 
for w^iich many of them paid dearly. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

FALL OF THE FRENCH POWER IN AMERICA. 

A A 7ARNED and urged by the Iroquois Indians, 
^ ^ and spurred on by the necessities and dangers 
of the situation, which grew more serious every day, 
a convention of the Northern colonies met at Al- 
bany, the ancient place of treaties. Among the 
delegates were Sir William Johnson and Governor 
Delancey of New York, King Hendrik, the Mohawk 
chieftain, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and 
Governor Shirley of Massachusetts. To the minds 
of the Indians, who were then a powerful political 
factor in the struggle for America, Albany, as being 
so near Tawasentha, the scene of Hiawatha's labors, 
and as " the place of many dead," had much the 
same associations as Westminster Abbey has to a 
speaker of the English tongue. 

With the example of the Dutch republic, the 
union of the New England colonies, and the Iro- 
quois Confederacy before them, the colonists won- 
dered why they could not unite together to form, as 
Jacob Leisler had already proposed in 1690, a fed- 
eral union. The chief newspaper then published in 

253 



2 54 ^^^ ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the colonies was the Pemtsylvania Gazette, edited 
by FrankHii. In this he had published the picture 
of a snake cut in ten parts, each part named after 
one of the Southern or Middle colonies, New Eng- 
land being the head and neck. Underneath was the 
motto, " Unite or die." 

The Congress enjoyed a public dinner in the 
Albany City Hall, June 19, 1764. There were 
twenty-five delegates from nine colonies, all being 
represented except New Jersey, the Carolinas, and 
Georgia. Whether in personal or representative 
dignity, this Congress was the most august assem- 
bly which had ever been held in the Western world. 
The business opened with a paper from Sir William 
Johnson and a speech from King Hendrik. Some 
of the colonial delegates must have received new 
ideas about the right way to deal with the Indians, 
for they saw that the New Yorkers believed the red 
man capable of understanding and honor, treating 
them in the spirit of the Golden Rule and the Ten 
Commandments, rather than according to the laws 
of Joshua and Ezra. Arendt Van Curler had taught 
the method and set the example. On the fifth day, 
a motion was made and carried unanimously, that a 
union of all the colonies was absolutely necessary for 
their security and defence. On the 9th of July the 
Congress voted " that there be a union of His Maj- 
esty's several governments on the continent, so that 



FALL OF THE FRENCH POWER IN AMERICA. 255 

their councils, treasure, and strength may be em- 
ployed in due proportion against their common 
enemy." According to this Albany plan of union, 
there were to be forty-eight members to meet at 
Philadelphia under a president-general. 

From the meeting of colonial delegates in Albany, 
after the burning of Schenectady in 1690, the word 
" Congress " had taken on a new meaning, which is 
very much like that now employed. Furthermore, 
the idea of a " continental " policy as distinct from 
the British, the independent as discriminated from 
trans-Atlantic ideas, grew. In the common talk of 
the people the continental man was he who was more 
and more interested in what all the colonies did in 
union, and less in what the king's ministers were 
pleased to propose according to their individual 
whims or notions. The Albany Congress was a 
great educator of the American people, who be- 
gan to think, as Wickliffe had long before done, 
and the Dutch first, and then the British had re- 
quired, that the dominion of a king ought to be 
founded in grace, and manifested in the will and 
ability to govern in righteousness, rather than rest 
on mere hereditary right. As might be supposed. 
King George rejected the Albany plan of union, 
dreading the very idea, as the beginning of inde- 
pendence, and scouting the idea that the colonies 
should be represented in Parliament. 



256 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

The British government, responding to the appeal 
of Governor Dinvviddie, was now thoroughly aroused, 
and the plan of a general campaign was elaborated. 
Major-General Edward Braddock, with a force of 
two thousand regulars and provincials, was to re- 
duce Fort Du Quesne ; Governor Shirley of Massa- 
chusetts was to capture Niagara ; Sir William John- 
son, with his Indian militia, was to seize Crown 
Point; and the Eastern colonists were to attack 
Acadia. Thus four expeditions were to be set on 
foot to crush the French power and to maintain the 
British hold on North America. 

The military history of the colonies during this 
war belongs properly to the romance of war, and 
not of colonization. Suffice it to say that Braddock 
was defeated. At Lake George a battle was fought, 
which was " a failure disguised by an incidental 
success." Niagara was captured by Sir William 
Johnson, Fort Du Quesne was taken in a second 
campaign, New Brunswick was seized, and Louis- 
burg was retaken. About eight thousand Acadians, 
French people who would not take the oath of 
allegiance, were compelled to give up their property 
and to find refuge elsewhere. This was done so 
hastily that families were separated and much suffer- 
ing caused. The pitiful story has been partially 
told in Longfellow's beautiful poem " Evangeline." 

Yet, on the whole, the war was rather feebly con- 



FALL OF THE FRENCH POWER LN AMERLCA. 257 

ducted, until William Pitt was made British Prime 
Minister. When he succeeded in infusing other men 
with his own dauntless spirit, the end was not far off. 
One of the great decisive battles of the world 
took place before Quebec, where Montcalm had 
gathered his forces. He was confronted by Wolfe, 
who was a soldier from his youth, had seen service 
in the Netherlands. After the failures of his 
predecessors he assured his sovereign that he 
should take Quebec or die. He had arrived in June, 
1759, in command of eight thousand men. In the 
first attack of July 31, he suffered repulse. So 
long as Montcalm held the great rocky fortress 
called the Gibraltar of America, and the French 
admiral had plenty of ships and boats in the river, 
it seemed as though Quebec would not fall. Yet 
Wolfe, though ill, discovered through his glass a 
ravine up which it seemed possible for a forlorn 
hope to climb. While the English ships perplexed 
the French admiral and made a feint of landing 
further up the stream, Wolfe, at the right turn of 
the tide, took thirty-six hundred men and dropped 
down the river, where he was joined by twelve hun- 
dred men from Point Levi on the opposite side. 
Then, by climbing up the ladder-like ledges of the 
rocky ravine, the British forces reached the summit 
and formed in battle array in the rear of the French 
host. 



258 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Montcalm thought that the British army was still 
in front of him when the sun rose upon the plateau 
above the heights of Abraham. Then he heard 
firing in front of the town, and was surprised to see 
the red-coated British army in line of battle. Mont- 
calm hurried forward his regiments, while his 
opponent led his Louisburg grenadiers in the 
charge. Wolfe was struck by a bullet and taken to 
the rear. He died happily when he heard that the 
French were retreating. Montcalm was also mor- 
tally wounded, and was glad to be spared the sight 
of seeing the lily flag lowered over the last strong- 
hold of France in America. 

The French gave up their cause as lost, but 
Pontiac could not accept cheerfully the change of 
masters. He had long been the ally of the French 
and was perhaps present at Braddock's defeat. Be- 
coming chief of three large tribes, he organized a 
conspiracy among all the Indians between the 
Ottawa and the lower Mississippi. In May, 1763, 
these confederated red men raised the war-whoop 
and rushed out on the war-path. Eight of the 
British garrisons, between Pittsburg and Mackinaw, 
were destroyed or dispersed on the same day, and 
the whole frontier was ravaged. 

The attack on Detroit, which Pontiac led in per- 
son, failed because love was stronger than death. 
A young Indian girl betrayed the plot to the com- 



FALL OF THE FRENCH POWER IN AMERICA. 259 

mander of the fort. It was a new thing for an 
Indian to lay siege to a fort, but Pontiac did so, 
beleaguering Detroit five months, from the middle 
of May to the middle of October. He kept up his 
force with food received from the Canadian settlers, 
whom he paid with promissory notes written on 
birch bark and which he afterwards redeemed. The 
scattered war continued for years, but this last 
attempt made by many confederated tribes to expel 
the white man and to reconquer their hunting- 
grounds failed hopelessly. 

During all this time the six Iroquois nations re- 
mained faithful to the covenant of Corlaer. The 
Delawares and Shawnees had got possession of 
rifles, which enabled them to carry less ammunition 
and move more alertly than when armed with mus- 
kets only. The Iroquois were sent out against 
them by Sir William Johnson, who traded in scalps 
and thus set a bad example to the British govern- 
ment and Continental Congress, in the policy of 
employing the Indians in war against white men. 

One of the largest conventions of red men ever 
held on the continent gathered at Niagara on July 8, 
1764, at the call of Sir William Johnson. From 
Dakota to Hudson's Bay, and from Maine to 
Kentucky, the Indians who were favorable to the 
English cause gathered " to brighten the silver 
chain of friendship " and with smoking calumet, 



26o THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

shining wampum, and buried tomahawk to swear 
allegiance to " Kora Kowa," — the great Van Curler, 
as the Indians call the sovereign of Great Britain. 
Hundreds of white captives were given up to their 
homes and relatives. Johnson s agent went further 
westward, and Pontiac made overtures of peace. 
At Detroit on August 17, the Indians, who had 
lately been in arms, " opened the path of the Eng- 
lish from the rising to the setting sun," burying the 
war hatchet, smoking the calumet, and planting the 
tree of peace. 

Pontiac himself met Johnson at Oswego, July 23. 
Amid every possible accessory of impressive dis- 
play and ceremony, besides the sacred tokens of 
friendship and the sacramental wampum, promises 
of peace were exchanged. Then Pontiac and his 
braves moved out in their canoes over Lake Onta- 
rio to the west and to obscurity. Henceforth the 
way of civilization was cleared, and the march of 
the white men to the Pacific beoan. 

In October, 1768, another convention of Indians 
was held at Fort Stanwix, now Rome, New York, 
over three thousand red men being present. For 
fifty thousand pounds sterling, plenty of rum, and 
the due exchange of speeches and wampum, the su- 
zerain tribes of the Six Nations, with their allies and 
vassals, sold outright to the king the vast territory 
now occupied by Kentucky, western Virginia, and 



FALL OF THE FRENCH POWER LN AMERLCA. 26 1 

western Pennsylvania. The next year Daniel 
Boone led from the southern Atlantic coast that 
great emigration of white men which resulted in 
the winning of the West. Latin civilization, except 
as it could be modified by the Germanic-American 
spirit, had left the whole continent north of Mexico 
forever. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

LAWFUL RESISTANCE TO UNLAWFUL TAXATION. 

THE French and Indian wars had brought to- 
gether in comradeship from the various colo- 
nies large bodies of men, who had learned much 
from one another. These, by their experiences, were 
now inspired to further enterprise. Thousands of 
brave men had been trained in the use of arms in 
war. When, as often happened, they saw the regu- 
lar soldiers of Europe turn and fly, while colonial 
riflemen stood up and faced the enemy, it took 
away all fear of " the king's troops " and educated 
the colonists for the War of Independence. 

Furthermore, when the French were no longer a 
power, the colonists felt less the need of protection 
from the British government. The Indians, though 
still a great danger, became of almost no political 
importance. Practically all hostile forces had been 
cleared from the region east of the Mississippi. 
The Alleghany Mountains were no longer a barrier. 
With such a state of mind and in such a situation, 
the very highest wisdom in the government at Lon- 
don was needed to rule wisely the American colonies. 

262 



LAWFUL RESISTANCE TO bW LAWFUL TAXATLON. 263 

It usually happens as between people in the old 
home land and those in the colonies, that the latter 
know much more about the people in the mother 
country than these do about the colonists. To-day, 
in the United States, the Western people are better 
acquainted with the Eastern people and affairs than 
the latter are with the former. The newer people 
hold tenaciously the old history and traditions, even 
if they do not follow the latest fashions. The sur- 
viving soldiers of the large British armies in Amer- 
ica, on returning to Great Britain, told about the 
land in which there were thriving towns and vil- 
lages, with churches, colleges and schools, printing 
presses and newspapers, and rich farms. Popular 
literature in the old country made English America 
better known, but it must be said that it came like 
a surprise to the majority of British people to learn 
about these colonies, with their governments that 
raised armies and had navies and that voted larsfe 
sums of money for carrying on the war. Experi- 
ences with Indians profoundly affected the British 
imagination, which was later fed and stimulated by 
travellers. Cooper's novels have made most British 
folks, especially the aristocratic and uncritical, think 
that red men in feathers, war-paint, fringed buck- 
skin, and moccasins are even yet quite common 
in the Atlantic coast cities. 

It had cost an enormous amount of money to 



264 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

carry on the war against the French in America, 
and the taxes laid upon the people to pay the 
interest on the debt was very heavy. It was dur- 
ing the reiscn of the Stuarts that Parliament had 
gained this power of taxing the people and also 
of dictating to the king. Charles I. and II. and 
James I. and II. had vainly tried to raise revenue 
without the aid of the people's representatives. 
In the struggle between the people and their 
rulers, the monarch had to give up his powers, so 
that the power of the chief servant of the people, 
who sits on the throne to-day, is almost nothing. 
The queen makes a good and obedient figure- 
head and Great Britain is practically a republic. 

Finding great difficulty in providing the revenue 
necessary to pay interest on the war debt, the 
Parliament of King George III. began to think of 
taxinor the colonists in America. So William Pitt 
arranged a system, borrowed largely from that in 
use in the republic of the United Netherlands when 
fighting for independence against Spain from 1568 
to 1648. The Dutch had been able to pay their 
way during eighty years of war by taxing food and 
drink, windows and chimneys, and almost everything 
bought, sold, or used. They cheerfully paid their 
taxes and had almost no war debt, when they had 
ended their long struggle. This was because they 
were well represented and voted the budget them- 
selves. 



LAWFUL RESISTANCE TO UNLAWFUL TAXATION. 265 

In America, too, in the colonial Assemblies 
where the people through their own representa- 
tives ordered the taxes which they were to pay, they 
cheerfully voted enormous sums. When they were 
allowed to say what the salaries of the king's 
officers should be, they gladly paid these also. 
When, however, these salaries were fixed in Eng- 
land, or by the governors and judges themselves, 
without regard to the wish of the colony's repre- 
sentatives, there was continual trouble between the 
people and their rulers. 

The British government determined not only 
to tax the colonists, but also to enforce the provi- 
sions of the Navigation Act. This forbade the 
colonists to trade with any country except Great 
Britain. These laws concerning shipping had been 
made a century before, with the idea of ruining 
Dutch trade and getting possession of the carry- 
ing business on the ocean. For a long time the 
Navigation Act had not been enforced in the 
colonies. Colonial fortunes had been made by 
trading in the West Indies, by sending lumber 
and fish and getting in return molasses, sugar, and 
Spanish milled dollars. 

When King George III., of that Hanoverian 
line which showed how many foreign dynasties 
have ruled England, came to the throne, he, like 
a conceited young man, was inclined to over-govern. 



266 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

He vigorously seconded the determination of Par- 
liament to tax the colonies. British ships were 
sent to the American coast to stop the trade with 
the West Indies and with Europe. Almost all 
the tea drunk in the colonies had been smuoQrled 
from Holland, and much lucrative trade had long 
been driven with the Spanish, French, and Dutch 
West Indies. 

The royal ofificers enforced this law with sudden 
and great severity. Under what were called Writs 
of Assistance, they entered the colonists' houses at 
all hours of the day and night, searching from 
top to bottom, without regard to the owner's con- 
venience. Nearly all laws can be used as engines 
of personal spite. This one gave the king's offi- 
cers and their adherents fine opportunities of 
wreaking their malice against persons whom they 
did not like. Thus the import trade of the colo- 
nists was nearly ruined. The spirit of the whole 
policy was exactly that which had broken up the 
industries of Ireland and compelled thousands of 
Ulstermen to emigrate to America to save them- 
selves from starvation. 

In England certain of the measures of taxation 
resorted to were very unpopular, especially the tax 
on windows. In old parts of London, one may 
still find houses in which windows were bricked up, 
in order to avoid paying the tax on light. Those 



LAWFUL RESISTANCE TO UNLAWFUL TAXATION. 267 

who supported George III. in his arbitrary meas- 
ures not a few of whom were notorious jobbers 
and speculators, were called " the king s friends." 
There were also a great many well-wishers of the 
colonies, some of them in the Parliament, like 
William Pitt and Edmund Burke, and some out- 
side, like the Rev. Dr. Price. This Unitarian 
clergyman wrote pamphlets of great vigor, show- 
ing keen knowledge of finance and of the principles 
of liberty. He denounced the wicked schemes 
and robber-like plans of " the moneyed friends of 
the government." He declared England to be a 
stepmother rather than a true parent, and argued 
that even though most of the colonists were of 
British descent, this fact conferred no more right 
upon Great Britain to lay taxes than upon Ger- 
many to tax Englishmen because the first historic 
settlers of England were Germanic tribes. Dr. 
Price's pamphlets were circulated by the tens of 
thousands in Great Britain. They were also trans- 
lated into Dutch by the statesman Van der Ca- 
pellen, who throughout remained a firm friend of 
the American cause. 

Against the protest of those who understood the 
American spirit and the principles of civil liberty 
best, Parliament, which was then, in the main, a 
very corrupt body of politicians, passed the Stamp 
Act in 1765. This decreed that all important 



268 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

papers used in legal or business matters, all printed 
matter, pamphlets, and newspapers were to have 
stamps put on them, which cost from half a penny 
to ten pounds. Without the stamps, manuscript 
or print was illegal. 

The Stamp Act was a tremendous stimulant to 
political discussion. Under its menace, there broke 
out a war of pamphlets written for and against the 
measure, but chiefly in opposition. The pulpit was 
also arrayed against the scheme. One clergyman, 
Jonathan Mayhew, ridiculed the saintship and mar- 
tyrdom of Charles I., and asserted the right of the 
people to disown and resist bad rulers, as English- 
men had done in the previous century. In his last 
message to James Otis, Mayhew pleaded for a perma- 
nent union of the colonies as a defence against evils 
to come. In Boston Faneuil Hall, built and pre- 
sented to the city by a Huguenot and called " the old 
cradle of liberty," after the hall in Utrecht, where 
the Dutch formed their Union of States, a town 
meeting^ was held and in it Samuel Adams de- 
nounced the act in fiery eloquence. In London, 
Benjamin Franklin protested against it. Yet, in 
spite of all remonstrances, the law was passed. 
Then royal officers were sent over into all the large 
towns with a supply of stamps. 

There were riots in Boston, and an organization 
called the Sons of Liberty, which met under a pine 



LAWFUL RESLSTANCE TO UNLAWFUL TAXATLON. 269 

tree, tore down the building where the stamps were 
to be sold, and hanged and burned an effigy of the 
royal officer who was to sell them. James Otis 
reaffirmed the principle that taxation without repre- 
sentation was tyranny. In the Virginia Assembly, 
Patrick Henry spoke so vigorously against the meas- 
ure and so great was the opposition in other col- 
onies, that the men appointed to sell the stamps 
were frightened out of their business and the act 
was not enforced. Nine of the colonies sent dele- 
o-ates to New York and a cono^ress was held, setting 
forth the ancient Dutch doctrine that the rio-ht to 
tax men belonged to their representatives alone. 
Yet there was nowhere any objection to pay taxes. 

When news of these proceedings in America 
reached England, Parliament repealed the Stamp 
Act. Yet, as the objection of the colonists was not 
to the tax, but to the way in which it was levied and 
collected, this repeal did not bring satisfaction or 
allay suspicion. Parliament still foolishly professed 
the right to tax the colonies. So the next year 
another act was passed. This imposed duties on 
imports, such as tea, glass, paint, and paper. To 
enforce this legislation, agents were to live in the 
seacoast towns where the British naval officers could 
protect them. In 1768 General Gage, who had been 
with Braddock, was sent over with two regiments 
of soldiers. These soldiers, as well as the royal gov- 



270 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

ernors, judges, and other officers, were to be paid 
with the money raised by the new scheme of taxa- 
tion projected under the Stamp Act. All the king's 
servants were to be made independent of the people. 
This meant an increase of royal power and the 
decrease of the power of the people, whose right of 
voting taxes, inherited first from their Germanic 
and then from their British ancestry, was to be 
taken away. 

The struggle for ancient rights and privileges 
which now began was to last, in peace and war, for 
nearly a quarter of a century. The people of the 
colonies agreed with one another not to buy, sell, or 
use any of the articles which were taxed. Those 
who supported the king were called Tories, while 
the Continentals, or Americans, were called Whigs. 
Among the former were fine families and individ- 
uals of high social and moral character, as well as 
some rascals and traitors, while amono- the latter 
were rough characters; yet the American patriots 
had most of the right on their side. Not a little 
bitterness, which in some cases broke out into vio- 
lence, existed between the adherents of ancient right 
and law and the loyalists. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

GOLDEN HILL, ALAMANCE, AND THE BOSTON 
MASSACRE. 

THE people of New York were especially forward 
in resisting the arbitrary measures of king and 
Parliament ; for, in addition to the spirit inherited 
from their own Dutch fathers who had so long- 
battled for liberty, the Germans were irritated at 
the attempts made directly and indirectly to force 
the church of England upon them. In the Mohawk 
valley and on Golden Hill, on Manhattan Island, 
they erected liberty poles, where affrays took place 
between the Whigs and Tories. The soldiers cut 
down and sawed up the liberty pole. On January 
i8, 1770, on Golden Hill, of which Gold Street is 
still a remembrance, a fight ensued in which blood 
was shed, — the first in the Revolution. One man, 
a sailor, died from his wounds. The reerected 
liberty pole remained until the British occupation 
of New York in 1776. A bronze tablet in the 
Post Office commemorates the fact. Liberty poles 
were the survival in history of the ancient forest 

271 



272 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

trees, under which the Teutonic tribes assembled in 
council for war, or to defend their rights. 

The first blood shed in the open field by the 
cannon and musketry of royal soldiers was in the 
state of North Carolina, where the people were 
divided in opinion. The admirers and adherents 
of the British governor William Tryon were mostly 
on one side, and the friends of righteousness and 
the people were nearly all on the other. Tryon, an 
Irishman, had married a relative of the British 
secretary of state for the colonies, and came over 
in 1764. At Newbern or New Berne, which had 
been settled and named by Swiss emigrants in 17 10, 
Tryon, at the expense of the colony, built a mag- 
nificent residence. He carried out his notions with 
such extravagance and rigor that the people became 
exasperated and formed themselves into an organi- 
zation to secure justice and better government. 
These men, mostly ScotchTrish, were called Regu- 
lators. When they took up arms to redress their 
wrongs, Tryon marched against them with infantry, 
cavalry, and artillery in large force. At Alamance, 
on the 15th of May, 1771, he attacked the petition- 
ers when they were unprepared. With his well- 
served cannon, handled by sailors, and his superior 
force, he scattered the Regulators and crushed the 
whole movement with great barbarity, hanging a 
large number of them. 



GOLDEN HILL, ALAMANCE, BOSTON MASSACRE. 2/3 

Tryon's policy so pleased his superiors in Europe 
that " Bloody Billy," as the colonists called him, 
was transferred to New York, where the spirit of the 
people had always held in check the arrogance of 
the royal governors. Tryon, who was expected to 
put down the threatening symptoms of dissatisfac- 
tion, began, as usual with New York's British gov- 
ernors, to engage first in large land speculations. 
The region in and about the Mohawk valley, from 
which at least six counties have since been formed, 
was named Tryon County. With the aid of his 
handsome wife and daughters, who had great social 
influence on Manhattan Island, and by his alertness 
and energy, Tryon was able to retard the patriot 
movement in New York. 

In front of the State House at Boston, the Brit- 
ish soldiers fired upon those who were irritating 
them by calling them " lobsters," on account of 
their red coats, and by bandying other epithets. 
Three men were killed, including Crispus Attucks, 
a mulatto slave. The blood crimsoninsf the white 
snow was never forgotten by the Boston people, and 
the exact spot is still marked by a circular arrange- 
ment of the stones in the granite pavement. The 
soldiers were defended by James Otis and John 
Quincy. They were all acquitted except two, who 
were publicly branded for manslaughter. In Rhode 
Island the people seized the British vessel, the 



2/4 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION 

Gaspec, by surprise and burned her. The conflict 
in the colonial Assemblies between the representa- 
tives of the people and the royal governors became 
more intensely bitter. 

With strange and fatuous refusal to see the prin- 
ciple involved, Parliament attempted to soothe the 
American feeling by removing all the taxes except 
that on tea. Yet the principle was the same for a 
small tax as for a large one. The colonies knew 
Dutch and English history too well to allow any 
tax to be extorted from men who could not them- 
selves vote on the expenditures, or be represented 
in the voting of the expenses of government. 

China furnished the magic leaf which dissolved 
the bond between the mother country and her 
grown-up child. Parliament in 1773 allowed tea to 
be brought to America and sold as cheaply as in 
England, while the tax was really, but not appar- 
ently, to be paid. Yet all this foolish legislation was 
but hammerinor or o-rindins^ the wedoe to a thinner 
edge, in order to drive it in all the more heavily 
when once inserted, and the Americans knew it. 

When the tea-ships which came from Amoy, 
China, — where the local pronunciation of the Chi- 
nese word cka is, as we have received and pro- 
nounce it, "tea," — the people of New York, 
Pennsylvania, and North Carolina would not allow 
the chests to be landed, but sent them back. In 



GOLDEN HILL, ALAMANCE, BOSTON MASSACRE. 2/5 

Maryland the owner of the tea-ship Peggy Stewart 
set fire to the vessel with his own hand and burned 
it up. In one or two other seaports the tea, though 
put ashore, was unbought and allowed to spoil 
through dampness. In Boston the citizens refused 
to permit the chests to be taken off the ships, but 
the royal officers detained the vessels in the harbor, 
so that on the twentieth day, according to rule, they 
could be unloaded by the custom-house authorities. 
On the evening before, a party of men disguised as 
Mohawk Indians boarded the tea-ships, opened the 
hatches, and tumbled the Chinese herb out in the 
water. 

Parliament retaliated for the Boston Tea Party's 
doings by passing acts which shut the port, stopped 
the city's trade, and changed the government of 
Massachusetts so as to destroy all popular power. 
Parliament also united the country north of the 
Ohio and east of the Mississippi into one dominion, 
so as to prevent Americans from settling in the con- 
quered territory and in order to conciliate the French 
colonists and get their aid, if possible, in case of 
war. American offenders were to be brought to 
England for trial. In other words, no justice could 
be obtained on this side of the Atlantic. 

After law had been thus trampled on by a gov- 
ernment controlled by unscrupulous money-makers, 
neither order nor freedom was safe. The people 



2/6 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

had to look on while Massachusetts was handed 
over to the rule of General Gage and his soldiers. 
Yet, since all the colonies sympathized with the 
Bay State, the people now took another step for- 
ward. Public opinion now declared that not only 
taxation, but legislation without representation, must 
be resisted and, if necessary, by force. In a word, 
the glorious precedent of the law-abiding Dutch- 
men in the federal republic founded by the German 
prince, William of Nassau, the apostle of toleration, 
was followed by our fathers. 

Americans, who have been foolishly taught to 
"hate the British," ought never to forget that Par- 
liament at this time represented landed property 
rather than the people, and that King George III. 
was narrow in mind, sluggish in thought, obstinate, 
and reactionary in principle. Once bent on a course 
of action, he could not be easily checked. The war 
against the American colonies was so unpopular in 
Great Britain, that even the big bounties offered 
failed to attract volunteers into the army to do the 
" King's dirty work " of fighting the colonists, who 
were standing on their rights. The British people 
have long ago acknowledged the folly of their rulers, 
and we ous^ht to know this and honor them for it. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



I WILL MAINTAIN. 



THE colonial Assemblies all passed resolutions 
condemning Parliament so severely, that in 
nearly every case the governors dissolved them. 
Several of the colonies were thus left without any 
real governor. Connecticut was the only colony in 
which both governor and people formed a unit in 
resisting revolution from without. In this Puritan 
democratic commonwealth, " Brother Jonathan " 
Trumbull was the efficient chief magistrate. 

A call was made for another Congress, which met 
in 1774 at Philadelphia, in the pretty little building 
called Carpenter's Hall. This was the first " Con- 
tinental " Congress, because made up of delegates 
from all the thirteen colonies on the continent. 
They resolved not to buy, sell, or use English 
goods, and to support Massachusetts in her struggle. 
In the colonies, since the people and the royal 
governors were at strife, nobody knew whom to 
obey. Committees of safety and correspondence 
were therefore formed, and these began to collect 
powder and ball, provisions and military supplies. 

277 



278 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

They made themselves ready to maintain their 
rights should the King of Great Britain imitate 
Philip II. of Spain, by sending his own troops and 
foreign mercenaries to support usurpation, and 
force the colonists to pay taxes which they never 
voted. The motto of William the Silent, " I will 
maintain," now became that of thousands of men in 
the Middle colonies, who reechoed their ancestral 
watchword. 

As the largest British force was in the Bay State, 
it seemed probable that the outbreak must be there 
first. So the people of Massachusetts enrolled 
twelve thousand volunteers, a third of whom were 
minutemen. These were ready to leave their work 
and sfo to fi^ht at a moment's notice. When Gen- 
eral Gage received certain information that powder 
and ball, guns and camp equipage, had been col- 
lected at Concord, twenty miles from Boston, he 
ordered eight hundred men to march out to destroy 
them. Tryon, in North Carolina, had set him an 
example and precedent of success, which he was 
quick to follow. 

Now came the question to the people of Massa- 
chusetts as to what should be done. If they per- 
mitted the destruction of their property, then their 
conduct would mean that they were submissive to 
the acts of Parliament. If they resisted by force, 
it would mean war, but war with whom } Not 



"/ WILL MAINTAIN." 2/9 

against the king, for he was their sovereign and 
in theory all law centred in him and they were his 
subjects. According to ancient English law, the 
townsman has a right to go up and down " the 
king's highway " without molestation, provided he 
conducts himself peaceably. If townsmen should 
be met and hindered by the king's troops while on 
the highway, and the king's troops should fire upon 
them and injure them, then the townsmen would 
be innocent. The king's troops would be the ag- 
gressors, and whoever ordered them to fire would 
be guilty and responsible. 

In theory, then, and exactly as next day they 
made affidavit, the king's subjects stood peaceably 
in the king's highway, when, on April 19, just 
before daybreak, sixty half-armed " minutemen " 
were ranged on the village green at Lexington. 
Captain Parker, their leader, addressed them as free- 
men standing for right and law, saying, " Men, stand 
your ground ; don't fire unless fired upon, but if 
they mean war, let it begin here." Major Pitcairn, 
coming up the road with his redcoats, called the 
townsmen " rebels," and ordered them to disperse. 
The law-abiding men of Lexington stood their 
ground. Knowing their rights, they dared to 
maintain them. 

The violator of English law, Major Pitcairn, dis- 
charged his pistols and ordered his men to fire. 



280 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

The volley stretched seven or eight men, citizens 
protecting their homes and rights, dead upon the 
green. War was definitely begun. Revolution 
had been introduced from without by the act of 
agents of the king. Henceforth " the British " and 
" the Americans " were to be two different peoples, 
even thouofh leo:al fictions mia^ht for a while remain 
and many good men hope and pray for union. 

The British officers expected to be able to arrest 
two prominent men whom they called rebels. One 
was named John Hancock, a wealthy merchant of 
Boston who was at the head of the provisional 
government. The other was Samuel Adams, who 
had been very active in organizing committees of 
safety and correspondence and who had kept up 
the agitation against parliamentary and royal usur- 
pation. The British failed. The country had been 
alarmed by Paul Revere, a patriot living in Boston, 
who, like the Faneuils, Bowdoins, Chardons, Brim- 
mers, and other New Englanders, came of that 
splendid Huguenot stock which has helped to make 
the Boston of to-day so lovely. 

Leaving Lexington, the British troops moved on 
to Concord, destroying the military stores by scat- 
tering the powder, throwing the cannon-balls into 
the wells, and breaking up the wooden spoons. On 
returning, at Concord bridge they met the " em- 
battled farmers." Both parties joined in war upon 



"/ JVILL MAINTAIN." 28 I 

each other, and the Concord men " fired the shot 
heard round the world." The Americans remained 
in possession of the bridge, and the regulars began 
their retreat to Boston. Now, from all over the 
country rushed the minutemen with powder horn, 
bullet pouches, and muskets. From behind stone 
walls, trees, and bushes they fired upon those they 
deemed invaders and abettors of wrong. There 
were scores of little skirmishes at the spots marked 
to-day with inscribed stones. 

The British soldier is not a coward. The men 
in red coats fought bravely, yet the retreat grew 
faster and faster. The whole force might have been 
annihilated, except that Lord Percy met the sur- 
vivors at Lexington with reinforcements. They had 
artillery by which to keep the Americans at a dis- 
tance, yet before they got back to Boston probably 
three hundred of the British infantry were killed 
or wounded. 

General Gage's army was now shut up in Boston, 
for the militia, arriving daily from New Hampshire 
and Connecticut, as well as from Massachusetts, 
surrounded the city and kept it in a state of siege. 

According to the prevalent fictions of law, the 
Americans had fought their battles in the name of 
King George against the attempt of Parliament to 
govern them illegally. There was still no definite 
idea of separation from the mother country. The 



282 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

royal officers, governors, judges, tax-collectors, etc., 
fled and took refuge among the British garrisons or 
on ships of war. The colonial governments were 
broken up, but provincial congresses carried on 
political business and maintained order. 

The second Continental Congress, which met in 
Philadelphia, was made up of the ablest men from 
the colonies. Some of these were John Adams, 
Samuel Adams, and John Hancock of Massachu- 
setts ; John Jay of New York ; Robert Morris and 
Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania; Patrick 
Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington 
from Virginia. These were specimens of manhood 
grown in the colonies, and besides these were many 
more men in the prime of life and of distinguished 
ability, well read in the precedents of Dutch law 
and independence, in More and Harrington, in the 
literature of the English commonwealth, and the 
Revolution of 1688, as well as in the ancient law of 
England and the classic and Biblical story of the 
rise and development of nations. 

This Conorress declared the militia grathered 
around Boston to be a Continental army, and ap- 
pointed Washington commander-in-chief. Decision 
was also made, by the act of December 22, 1775, 
to begin a navy, and soon the shipyards at Ken- 
sinQ^ton had the keels laid of war-vessels, which 

O 

were built by the " free Quaker " brothers, Manuel 



"/ WILL MALiVTALN." 283 

and Jehu Eyre, afterwards officers in the Conti- 
nental army. These ships were named by John 
Adams, after three Itahans, the Cohunbiis, Cabot, 
and Andrea Doria ; the Saxon King Alfred ; and 
in rehance upon Divine favor, Providence. Thus 
the initial ships of our gallant navy recalled appro- 
priately the names of the two navigators who be- 
gan the romance of discovery in America ; the ruler 
around whom our noblest ancestral traditions cling; 
the high-minded Italian, generous and just, who, 
even after conquering the city of Genoa, allowed 
the people to maintain a republic ai;d to make their 
own laws ; and that Divine government wherein 
even a sparrow's fall is not too minute to be noted. 
To begin armed resistance against Parliament, in 
the name of King George of Great Britain, was to 
do exactly what the Dutch did when they made 
war, in the name of Philip II., King of Spain 
and Count of Holland, against the Duke of Alva 
and other servants of the Spanish monarch. It 
was exactly what Cromwell and the parliamentary 
party did during the English Civil War, when they 
issued commissions in the name of the very king, 
Charles II., against whom they were fighting. It 
is practically the same theory of law, when it is 
understood that one cannot besfin suit aoainst the 
state, or sovereign power, but only against the 
servants of the state. 



284 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

Ticonderoga and Crown Point were full of muni- 
tions of war. In Vermont, Ethan Allen, a Connect- 
icut man, assisted by the Dutch .officer Colonel 
Bernard Romans, laid a plan to capture the forts. 
In the employ of British government, this Euro- 
pean engineer had explored and surveyed Florida, 
but had resigned his commission and taken up the 
American cause. Surprising the sentinels, Allen 
rushed into the British commander's room at Ticon- 
derooa and demanded the surrender of the fortress. 
This was quickly granted. Within twenty-four 
hours. Crown Point was also taken. Cannon, arms, 
lead, and powder were transported, on sledges and 
otherwise, to Boston, where they were most needed. 
For permanent supplies, the Americans relied upon 
the captures made by privateers. Until 1780, they 
obtained in best quality and greatest quantity 
what the army most needed from the Dutch at 
St. Eustatius Island in the West Indies. Most of 
the " hardw^are " and "grain," that is, cannon and 
powder, with arms and clothing, were made in Eng- 
land and sold by English merchants to Hollanders, 
who sent them to America to be exchanged for 
tobacco, and the French and Dutch silver and gold 
borrowed by Congress. 

Washington set out for Cambridge, but before 
he arrived the Americans seized Bunker Hill, in 
order to build a redoubt by which they could mount 



"/ WILL MAINTAIN." 285 

cannon and fire into Boston. They went still 
nearer and fortified Breed's Hill, where now the 
battle monument stands. The village of Charles- 
town lay at the foot of the hill on the edge of the 
water. At that time Boston was situated on a little 
peninsula, most of it north and east of the State House 
on Beacon Hill. All around was water except the 
narrow neck which united the city to the mainland 
where Roxbury and Dorchester lay. 

When Gage the next morning saw what was 
being done, he ordered the British ships — some of 
them lying where is now the solid ground of Com- 
monwealth Avenue — to go near and bombard the 
Americans. He sent three thousand men in boats, 
who embarked where the Providence station and 
the Public Gardens are to-day, and they landed in 
Charlestown at the foot of the hill. They first ate 
their lunch leisurely and comfortably before the 
eyes of the hungry and tired patriots, who looked 
at them from behind their rude earthworks. The 
British troops then got ready to advance, as they 
supposed, to easy victory. They were not even sure 
whether or not " the Yankees would fight." The 
Americans were commanded by Colonel Prescott, 
aided by General Putnam and General Warren, and 
numbered fifteen hundred men. Instead of bush- 
whacking, skirmishing, and firing from behind trees 
and walls, this was to be a battle in force. The 



286 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

ever-brave British soldier, with his bull-dog courage 
and tenacity, was not likely to give up easily. 

The result showed not only that the Yankees 
would fight, but that they were able to control 
themselves and hold their fire until they could see 
the whites of their enemies' eyes and count the 
fifth button on each red coat. Then a sheet of 
flame broke from the breastworks. The British 
ranks were broken ; their breast buttons were towards 
Boston, and their backs towards the redoubt. 

At the foot of the hill, the brave men were re- 
formed. Again they charged, only to be once more 
driven back. At the third onset, having galled the 
Americans on the flanks by means of their artillery, 
the British were successful and entered the redoubt. 
The colonials having no more bullets or powder, 
and unable to keep up the hand-to-hand fight, 
retreated slowly over toward Cambridge. The 
British losses were one thousand and fifty-four, the 
American four hundred and forty-nine. Charles- 
town village was burned and General Warren 
killed. Prescott wished to recapture the hill, and 
declared that if he had had three regiments with 
bayonets he could do so ; but no attempts were 
made to drive out the garrison, who with true 
British pluck, as at Lexington and Concord, had 
persevered, accomplishing what they had set out to 
do. One incident will show how little thought 



"/ WILL MAINTAIN." 28/ 

there was of separating from Great Britain. When 
General Putnam's regiment in Connecticut was 
drawn up in hne on Cambridge Common, before 
going into battle, Chaplain Abiel Leonard offered 
prayer to Almighty God. This is part of his peti- 
tion : — 

" And grant, O Lord, that the inhabitants of 
Great Britain may arise and vindicate their liber- 
ties ; and that a glorious reunion may take place 
between them and Thy people in this land founded 
upon the principles of liberty and righteousness ; 
that the Britons and the Americans may rejoice in 
the king as the minister of God to both for good." 

Even six months after the battle of Bunker Hill, 
Philip Freneau, the Huguenot poet of New York, 
wrote a poem of which the closing stanza was : — 

" Long may Britannia rule our hearts again, 
Rule as she ruled in George the Second's reign. 
May ages hence her growing grandeur see, 
And she be glorious, but ourselves as free." 

In fact, the American Revolution, like the Dutch 
War of Independence, was not begun to obtain utter 
separation, but to maintain charter rights. Amer- 
icans as English subjects, whether by descent or 
under law, vindicated their birthright which the 
British government wickedly denied them. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

JULY 4, 1776, AND THE UNITED STATES OF 
AMERICA. 

WASHINGTON arrived in Cambridge early in 
June, 1775. He found an agglomeration of 
about fifteen thousand men, armed with all sorts of 
guns and weapons. They were raw militia, poorly 
clothed and not very willing to submit to military 
discipline. There was no uniformity in dress. 
Most of the men wore common tow hunting-shirts, 
usually dyed brown. The officers, who could afford 
a suit, wore blue cloth with buff trimmings, which 
afterwards became the uniform of the Continentals 
or regular American troops. Washington worked 
very hard to organize something like an army. 

When on this side of the Atlantic it became per- 
fectly certain that King George III. was entirely on 
the side of Parliament and joined with them in 
injustice, the desire grew stronger for separation 
and freedom. New colonial governments had been 
formed after the king's governors and judges had 
run away. The people now felt that the colonies 
were true states and able to take care of themselves. 

288 



JULY 4, 1776, AND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 289 

When, on January i, 1776, the king's proclamation 
was read in the American camp and it was found 
that, instead of listening to their humble and loyal 
petition for justice, he had called them " rebels " and 
tried to hire Russian and Dutch soldiers to subdue 
them, and, failing in that, had secured nearly thirty 
thousand Hessians to do his work, the Americans 
saw there was no hope of reconciliation. 

There was no regular flag, but rather a variety of 
emblems, such as the pine tree of Massachusetts 
and the grape vine of Connecticut. As almost all 
the military words for arms, command, or discipline, 
such as " tattoo," " tug of war," " forlorn hope," 
" body-guard," " knapsack," " haversack," and " flag," 
were of Dutch origin, borrowed or corrupted, from 
the days when Irish, Scotch, Welsh, and English- 
men foueht shoulder to shoulder for freedom in the 
Netherlands, so also the union flag of the united 
colonies was like that of the old Dutch naval flag 
of red and white stripes, one for each colony, with 
the double cross of St. George and St. Andrew 
to represent Great Britain. On January i, 1776, 
this union flag was raised over the American en- 
trenchments and saluted with thirteen guns. The 
" stars and stripes " were unknown until long after 
the Declaration of Independence. 

Washington held this army together during the 
winter, when, as Congress learned that the Cana- 



290 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

dian British were preparing to march down from 
northern New York, General Montgomery was sent 
to take Quebec. Marching by the Lake Champlain 
way, he captured Montreal, Benedict Arnold, of 
Connecticut, selected a route, of which Sir William 
Johnson had told him, through the Kennebec valley 
and the forests of Maine. His men suffered terri- 
bly, and many deserted. Arnold and Montgomery 
joined forces, and in December they tried to storm 
Quebec. Montgomery was killed, Arnold was badly 
wounded, and the Americans were soon driven out 
of the province. Thus Washington's plan of get- 
ting the Canadians to join with the other colonies 
failed, and Canada, with its mixed French and Brit- 
ish people, remained a province of the crown, to 
which the refugees, Tories and Loyalists, could fly. 

Early in the spring Washington seized Dorches- 
ter Heights, and had them fortified before General 
Gage could prevent him. This compelled the evac- 
uation of the city. On the 17th of March, the 
British troops, with many Tories and Loyalists, 
sailed away to Halifax. Then Washington and the 
Continentals entered the city in triumph. 

All this time the colonists were fighting in the 
name of British law and freedom against the illegal 
claims of Parliament. As the king was a represen- 
tative of all law and history, they had risen in armed 
resistance against his servants, but in his name. 



JULY 4, 1776, AND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 29 1 

In England thousands of persons and many able 
men believed that the Americans were true to law, 
and that in fighting for the right of taxation by their 
own Assemblies, they were doing just what English- 
men had done twice before under the Stuarts. The 
Continental Congress in issuing their declaration of 
rights October 14, 1774, wrote, that since they "can- 
not be properly represented in the British Parlia- 
ment, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power 
of legislation in their several provincial legislatures." 
They petitioned the king October 26, 1774, address- 
ing him as "the loving father " of his "whole people," 
and beseeching him to hear their complaints and 
redress their wrongs. 

When, however. Parliament heard of the sieg-e of 
Boston, there was an angry feeling in Great Britain, 
and the Americans were declared rebels. The gov- 
ernment at London made application to Queen 
Catherine at St. Petersburg for the hire of twenty , 
thousand Russian soldiers to fight the Americans, , 
but the great sovereign of the Russians refused to 
have one of her soldiers fiorht for Kino- Georo-e • 
■agamst the colonists. Thus began the first of many ' 
kindnesses which have always made Americans feel 
grateful and friendly to Russia. 

Then King George applied to the republic of 
the United Netherlands for Dutch troops, but the 
Netherlanders, being republicans, sympathized with 



292 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

the Americans and refused a single man. On the 
contrary, Dutch officers crossed the ocean to serve in 
the American cause. The Dutch saw that exactly 
as their own ancestors did, so the Americans were 
doing in resisting injustice and wicked taxation. 
All through the Revolutionary War, the Dutch 
sympathies were very warm in behalf of our fathers. 
A body of Scotch troops, forming the Scotch Bri- 
gade, who had long served the Dutch republic, was 
required by King George, who sent an autograph 
letter to his relative, the stadholder, requesting 
their return to England. The Prince of Orange at 
this time was William V., who, for aping the ways 
of British monarchs in a republic, was later driven 
out of the country, as James II. had been out of 
England. The request of King George was bitterly 
opposed in the Dutch Congress by Baron Van der 
Capellen and other political opponents of the stad- 
holder and by friends of the Americans. In the 
West Indies, the Dutch governor Johannes de Graaf 
showed open sympathy with our fathers. On the 1 6th 
of November, 1 776, he ordered the first foreign salute 
fired to the flag of the United States of America. 
King George at last secured about thirty thousand 
Hessians to do his vile work in America. 

Since the British ships captured all American 
vessels they could find, and treated their crews with 
great cruelty, the people of the colonies, slowly but 



JULY 4, 1776, AND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 293 

surely, became united in a desire for independence. 
Indeed, they soon began to feel that they would 
obtain it if they should fight for it. 

There was also great sympathy with the American 
cause in France and Germany. Besides Lafayette, 
the Frenchman ; De Kalb and Steuben, Germans ; 
Kosciusko and Pulaski, Poles ; Romans and Dirck, 
Dutchmen, — there were other European officers 
who crossed the ocean to help our fathers. 

In Philadelphia there was an Englishman, Thomas 
Paine, who had emigrated from the eastern counties 
where nonconformity had always been so strono-, 
whence most of the emigrants to New England had 
come and in which the parliamentary armies had 
been mostly raised. Paine was a literary man, editor, 
and clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and all his 
life an unselfish champion of the rights of man. He 
wrote a pamphlet called " Common Sense," in which 
he declared that the time had come for a final sepa- 
ration from England, and that arms must decide the 
contest. This little pamphlet voiced the sentiment 
of thousands and tens of thousands of people who 
were thinking the same thoughts. It was the most 
widely circulated and most generally read document 
yet printed in America. 

When the Continental Congress met again in 
Philadelphia in June, 1776, it was no longer one of 
colonies only. Some of these had already become 



294 THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION. 

states. In North Carolina, as we read on the state 
seal to-day, the people of Mecklenburg County, mostly 
Scotch-Irish, had, on May 30, 1775, declared their 
independence, and on April 12, 1776, the pro- 
vincial Cono-ress instructed their deleo^ates to Phila- 
delphia to vote for separation from Great Britain. 
The motion to become a nation came from the 
oldest of the colonies, and the secondini^f from the 
next in age and dignity. Richard Henry Lee, of 
Virginia, offered a resolution that " these united 
colonies are and of right ought to be free and in- 
dependent states." John Adams, of Massachusetts, 
seconded the resolution. 

The committee of five to prepare the declaration 
consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benja- ^ 
min Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Living- fy 
ston. The document was the work, of Thomas 
Jefferson, and was written by him in a house on 
the corner of Seventh and Market streets. After 
being debated in the State House, in the room now 
called Independence Hall, it was signed on the 4th of 
July by John Hancock, president of the Congress. 
It was read in Independence Square to the people, 
from a timber stand or observatory which had been 
erected for Rittenhouse to observe the transit of 
Venus, which took place on June 3, 1769. In the 
view of the world a new luminary was passing 
across the great disc of history on July 4, 1776. 



JULY 4, 1776, AND UNITED STATES OE AMERICA. 295 

Then the " old liberty bell " was rung in the 
State House. In Massachusetts the name of the 
town with the highest altitude in the state was 
changed from " Gage " to " Washington." In New 
York city the people tore down the leaden statue 
of King George and melted the lead into bullets. 
The name of Tryon County was changed to that 
of Montgomery. Later divisions w^ere called after 
Americans, — Herkimer, Madison, Fulton, and 
Hamilton. 

When the representatives of the thirteen colonies 
added their names to the immortal Declaration, the 
work of severance, preparatory to a " more perfect 
union " of the " people of the United States," was 
done. Our nation came into existence and the 
colonial era of our history was over. Like the 
Dutch republic, our thirteen states, protesting 
against illegal taxation, first formed a federal 
union, keeping up government in the name of the 
king, and then, in the month of July, declared 
themselves independent and entered as a sovereign 
nation upon the war which resulted in freedom under 
law. Our country borrowed most of her political 
precedents from the free republic of the Netherlands, 
while reinforcing and safeguarding the organism 
with the noblest British precedents. The romance 
of American colonization had become the reality of 
the United States of America. 



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War of the Revolution Series. 

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rHREE COLONIAL BOYS. A Story of the Times 
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It is a story of three boys wlio were drawn into the events of the times, is patriotic, 
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r'HREE YOUNG CONTINENTALS. A Story of 
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This story is historically true. It is the best kind of a story either for boys or girl.;, 
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New Jersey Campaign, 17761777. 391 pp. Cloth, I1.50. 

The book has enough history and description to give value to the story which ought 
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I'he historical details of the .-tory are taken from old records. These include 
accounts of the life on the prison shins and prison houses of New York, the raids of the 
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Few boys' stories of this class show so close a study of history combined with such 
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rWO \OUNG PATRIOTS. A Story of Burgoyne's 
Invasion. 366 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

The crucial campaign in the American struggle for independence came in the sum- 
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colonies asundei and join another British army which was to proceed up the \-alley of 
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kJ "Pushing to the Front," "Architects of Fate," etc. 317 pp. 
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It is doubtful whether any success books for the young have appeared in modern 
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dry paragraph nor a single line of useless moralizing in any r.f his bc^oks. 

To stimulate, inspire, and guide is the mission of his latest book, "Success," and 
helpfulness is its keynote. lis object is 10 spur the perplexed youih to act the Columbus 
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Brain and Brawn Series. 

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r'HE YOUNG REPORTER. A Story of Printing 
House Square. 300 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

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" The Young Reporter " is a rattling book for boys. — AVrw York Recorder. 

The best boys' book I ever read. — Mr. Phillips, Critic for New \ 'ork Times. 



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'HE EAST MAIL. A Story of a Train Boy. 328 pp. 

Cloth, $1.50. 

" The Fast Mail " is one o^the very best American books for boys brought out this 
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that the little sons of the present writer have greedily devoured the contents of the vol- 
ume, and are anxious to know how soon they are to get a sequel. — The Art Amateur, 
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r'HE BEACH PATROL. A Story of the Life-Saving 
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The style of narrative is excellent, the lesson inculcated of the best, and, above all, 
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rHE YOUNG SUPERCARGO. A Story of the 
Merchant Marine. 352 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

Kit Silburn is a real " Brain and Brawn " boy, full of sense and grit and sound 
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give hmi a start, he does a deal of hard work between the evening when he first meets 
the stanch Captain Griffith, and the proud day when he becumes purser of a great 
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the cabin of the Nor Ik Cape, or landing cargo in ^■ucatan, or hurrying the spongers 
and fruitmen of Nassau, or exploring London, or sight seeing with a disguised prince 
in Marseilles, he is always the same busy, thoroughgoing, manly Kit. Whether or not 
he has a father alive is a question of deep interest throughout the story; but that he 
has a loving and loyal sister is plain from the start. 

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CiERAPH, THE LITTLE VLOLLNISTE. By Mrs. 
O C, V. Jamieson. 300 pp. Cloth, |i. 50. 

The scene of the story is the French quarter of New Orleans, and charming bits of 
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Perhaps the most charming story she has ever written is that which describes Seraph, 
the little violiniste. — Transcript, Boston. 

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TraveI=Adventure Series. 

JN WILD AFRICA. Adventures of Two Boys in the 
J- Sahara Desert, etc. Rv Thos. W. Knox. 325 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

A story of absorbing interest. — Boston Journal. "' 

Our young people will pronounce it unusually good. — Albany Ar^us. 

col. Knox has struck a popular note in his latest volume. — Springfield Republican. 

CT'HE LAND OF THE KANGAROO. By Thos. 
-i W. Knox. Adventures of Two Boys in the Great Island Con- 
tment. 318 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

ing. ^^D^^olFpreePre^^ ""'"'"' '"''°'^ '"^ ''°''"^ °^ "'^ "°""'''y ^'^ "^^ '^''''''■ 
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/^rFR THE ANDES; or. Our Boys in New South 

y^ America. By Hezekiah Butterworth. 368 pp Cloth 

lr.50. -^ ^^ ' 

No writer of the present century has done more and better service than Hezekiah 

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cfrntTrnfvTk. '^'"""""^ -«>'. of ^ country too little known b/American reaZs.- 

1,U ^^^' p^'tf^r^'Ofh is careful of his historic facts, and then he charmingly interweaves 

Ocean '^^' ^^S^""*"' ^""^ Patriotic adventures as few writers can. -Chicago Inter- 

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T OST IN NICARAGUA ; or. The Lands of the Great 
J~^ Canal. By Hezekiah Butterworth. 295 pp. Cloth, 1:1.50. 

,v,„T''^ ^°i°'' ?■'%'"'■« 'he wonderful land of Nicaragua and continues the story of the 
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ancient idol cave, and is rescued in a remarkable wav by an old Mosquito Indian The 
ThJ?) !If/- I-'" '"'''' ^ "f^yj^ '° S'''^ "'^ ancient legends of Guatemala, the siory of 
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.Since the voyage of the Oregon, of ,3,000 miles to reach Kev West the American 
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history of the projects for the canal, and facts about cintral America, and a Mrt of it 
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(QUARTERDECK AND FOKSLE. By Molly 
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oTtr ht^'e'r^fCr-L^;."''' " ^'^'" ^^"^ '-''^ --^ ^-^'-'- - '•- ^-d^ ^^ 

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Fighting for the Flag Series, 

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\ACK BENSON'S LOG ; or, Afloat with the Flag in 
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MEDAL OF HONOR MAN; or. Cruising Among 
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GLRL OF '7<5. By Amy E. Blanchard. 331 pp. 
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" A Girl of '76 " lays its scene in and around Boston where the principal events of 
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a scene in Charlestown, where Elizabeth Hall and her parents live. The emptying of 
the tea in Boston Harbor is the means of giving the little girl her first strong impression 
as to the seriousness of her father's opinions, and causes a quarrel between herself and 
her schoolmate and playfellow, Amos Dwight. 



A 



SOLDLER OF THE LEGLON By Chas. Led- 
yard Norton. 300 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

Two boys, a Carolinian and a Virginian, born a few years apart during the last half 
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The younger of the two was William Henry Harrison, sometime President of the 
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The story has to do with the early days of the Republic, when the great, wild, un- 
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rFIE ORCUTT GIRLS: or, One Term at the Academy. 
By Charlotte M. Vaile. 316 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

A well-told story of school life which will interest its readers deeply, and hold 
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Mrs. Vaile gives us a story here which will become famous as a description of a 
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with an exception here and there. — Boston Transcript. 

CiCE ORCUTT. A Sequel to " The Orcutt Girls." By 
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It is a cliarming story from beginning to end and is written in that easy flowing 
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rHE M. M. C. A Story of the Great Rockies. By 
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The pluck of the little school teacher, struggling against adverse circumstances, to 
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CriTE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY ; or, a Thousand 
J. Years of Exploration, etc. By William Elliot Griffis. 
305 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

It is a book of profit and interest involving a variety of correlated instances and 
influences which impart the flavor of the unexpected. — Philadelphia Presbyterian. 

An intensely interesting narrative following well-authenticated history. — Telescope. 

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behold I they have read a history of America. — Awakener. 

rHE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COLONIZA- 
TION ; or. How the Foitndatioits of Our Country Were Laid. 
By William Elliot Griffis. 295 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

To this continent, across a great ocean, came two distinct streams of humanity 
and two rival civilizations, — the one Latin, led and typified by the .Spanish, with 
Portugese and Frenth also, and the other Germanic, or Anglo-Saxon, led and typified 
by the English and reinforced by Dutch, German, and British people. 

/I SON OE THE REVOLUTION. An Historical 
u^ Novel of the Days of Aaron Burr. By Elbridge S. Brooks. 
301 pp. Cloth, ^1.50. 

The story of Tom Edwards, adventurer, as it is connected with Aaron Burr, is 
in every way faithful to the facts of history. As the story progresses the reader will 
wonder where the line between fact and fiction is to be drawn. Among the characters 
that figure in it are President Jefferson, Gen .Andrew Jackson, General Willcinson, 
and many other prominent government and army officials, 

W. A. Wilde &" Co., Boston and Chicago. 



IV. A. Wilde 6- Co., Publishers. 



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ALVERN, A NEIGHBORHOOD STORY. By 
Ellen Douglas Deland. 341 pp. Cloth, $1.50. 

Her descriptions of boys and girls are so true, and her Icnowledge of their ways is 
so accurate, that one must feel an admiration for her complete mastery of her chosen 
field. — 'file Argus, Albany. 

Miss Deland was accorded a place with Louisa M. Alcott and Nora Perry as a 
successful writer of books for girls. We think this praise none too high. — The Post. 

SUCCESSFUL VENTURE. By Ellen Douglas 
Deland. 340 pp. Cloth, |i. 50. 

One of the many successful books that have come from her pen, which is certainly 
the very best. — Boston Herald. 

It is a good piece of work and its blending of good sense and entertainment will be 
appreciated. — Congregaiionalist . 

ATRINA. By Ellen Douglas Deland. 340 pp. 
Cloth, $1.50. 

" Katrina " is the story of a girl who was brought up by an aunt in a remote village 
of Vermont. Her life is somewhat lonely until a family from New York come there to 
board during the summer. Katrina's aunt, who is a reserved woman, has told her little 
of her antecedents, and she supposes that she has no other relatives. Her New York 
friends grow very fond of her and finally persuade her to visit them during the winter. 
There new pleasures and new temptations present themselves, and Katrina's character 
develops through them to new strength. 

BOVE THE RANGE. By Theodora R. Jenness. 
332 pp. Cloth, $1.25. 

The quaintness of the characters described will be sure to make the story very pop- 
ular. — Book News, Philadelphia. 

A book of much interest and novelty. — The Book Buyer, New York. 



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IG CYPRESS. By Kirk Munroe. 164 pp. Cloth, 
1. 00. 

If there is a man who understands writing a story for boys better than another, it is 
Kirk Munroe. — Springfield Republican. 

A capital writer of boys' stories is Mr. Kirk Munroe. — Outlook. 



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OR EMAN JENNIE. By Amos R. Wells. A Young 
Woman of Business. 268 pp. Cloth, J1.25. 



It is a delightful story. — The Advance, Chicago. 

It is full of action. — The Standard, Chicago. 

A story of decided merit. — The Epnvorih Herald, Chicago. 



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YSTERIOUS VOYAGE OF THE DAPHNE. 

By Lieut. H. P. Whitmarsh. 305 pp. Cloth, f 1.25. 

One of the best collections of short stories for boys and girls that has been pub- 
lished in recent years Such writers as Hezekiah Butterworth, Wm. O. Stoddard, and 
Jane G. Austin have contributed characteristic stories which add greatly to the general 
interest of the book. 

W. A. Wilde &= Co., Boston and Chicago. 



IV. A. Wilde &- Co., Publishers. 



'pHILIP LEICESTER. By Jessie E. Wright. 264 
± pp. Cloth, jfi. 25. 

The book ought to make any reader thankful for a good home, and thoughtful for 
the homeless and neglected. — Golden Rule. 

The story is intensely niteresting. — Christian Inquirer. 



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AP'N THISTLETOP. By Sophie Swett. 282 pp. 
Cloth, $1.25. 

Sophie Swett knows how to please young folks as well as old ; for both she writes 
simple, unaffected, cheerful stories with a judicious mingling of humor and plot. Such 
a story is " Cap'n Thistletop." — The Outlook. 



ADY BETTY'S TWINS. By E. M. Waterworth. 
117 pp. With 12 illustrations. 75 cents. 



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The story of a little boy and girl who did not know the meaning of the word 
" obedience.'' They learned the lesson, however, after some trying experiences. 

rHE MOONSTONE RING. By Jennie Chappell. 
118 pp. With 6 illustrations. 75 cents. 

A home story with the true ring to it. Tlie happenings of the story are somewhat 
out of the usual run of events. 

r'HE BEACON LIGHT SERIES. Edited by Nat- 
alie L. Rice. 5 vols. Fully Illustrated. The Set, ^2.50. 

The stories contained in this set of books are all by well-known writers, carefully 
selected and edited, and they cannot, therefore, fail to be both helpful and instructive. 

r'HE ALLAN BOOKS. Edited by Miss Lucy 
Wheelock. 10 vols. Over 400 illustrations. The set in a 
bo.\, $2.50. 
One of the best and most attractive sets of books for little folks ever published. 
They are full of bright and pleasing illustrations and charming little stories just adapted 
to young children. 

r'HE MAR/ OR IE BOOKS. Edited by Miss Lucy 
Wheelock. 6 vols. Over 200 illustrations. The set, $1.50. 



A very attractive set of books for the little folks, full of pictures and good stories. 



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OT'S LLBRAR Y. Edited by Miss Lucy Wheelock. 
10 vols. Over 400 illustrations. The set, $2.50. 

in every way a most valuable set of books for the little people. Miss Wheelock 
possesses rare skill in interesting and entertaining the little ones. 

W. A. Wilde 6t= Co.., Boston and Chicago. 
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IV. A. Wilde 6^ Co., Publishers. 



PELOUBETS SELECT NOTES. By F. N. Pelou- 
BET, D. D., and M. A. Peloubet. A Commentary on the Inter- 
national Sunday-school Lessons. Illustrated. 340pp. Cloth, ^1.25. 
This commentary is the one book every teacher must have in order to do the best 
work. It interprets the Scripture, illustrates the truths, and by striking comments con- 
vinces the mind. 

It is comprehensive, and yet not verbose, and furnishes winnowed material in the 
most attractive and yet convincing form from both spiritual and practical standpoints. 
Accurate colored maps and profuse original illustrations illuminate the text, and create an 
intelligent and instructive view of the subject matter. 

Teachers are invited to send for sample pages of " Select Notes." 

71/ AYS OF WORKING; or, Helpful Hmts to Sunday- 

yy school Workers of all Kinds. By Rey. A. F. SCHAUFFLER, 
D. D. 23(S pp. Cloth, $1.00. 

A really helpful manual for Sunday-school workers. — The Sunday-school Times. 

It unlocks the door to the treasure-house of Sunday-school success. — F. N. 
Peloubet, D. D. 

The best all-around book for a Sunday-school worker I know of. — Marion Law- 
rence, Secretary Ohio State S. S. Association. 

This book absolutely covers every phase of Sunday-school work in a clear, instruc- 
tive manner, and cannot fail to be of marked benefit to every worker. Send for sample 
pages. 

CiPECIAL SONGS AND SEE VICES for Pritnary and 
O Intertnediate Classes. Compiled by Mrs. M. G. Kennedy. 160 
pp. Price, 45 cents. $40.00 per hundred. 
The book contains Exercises for Christmas, Easter, Children's Day, Harvest, etc.; 
Lessons on Lord's Prayer, Commandments, Books of the Bible, Missions, and many 
other subjects. Adapted to Primary and Intermediate Classes, Junior Endeavor 
Societies, etc. 

It has ninety pages of new, bright music for all occasions, including a large number 
of Motion Songs that are now so popular. We feel sure the book will prove instruc- 
tive, interesting, and entertaining. It is printed on heavy paper, bound in board covers. 
Sample pages sent on application. 

CT-IIE PAIM BRANCH; or, the Gospel in Song. By 
-/ Mrs. J. A. Hodge. 112 pp. Price, 35 cents each; $30.00 
per hundred copies. 
A new hymn book for little children in the Sunday school and home. Its object is 
to call forth the love of the children to Christ, by teaching them the truths concerning 
Christ, and their relation to Him. The language is therefore simple, within their com- 
prehension. The music has been carefully selected from good composers, of a high 
order, and well adapted to the voices of children. Another peculiarity of the book 
is that it is beautifully illustrated with seven full-page pictures. 

CtUNDA Y-SCHOOL PICTURES. Illustrating the In- 
O ternational Sunday-.School Lessons. A set of Sixteen Pictures 
for each Quarter. 
Each picture is printed on 7 x 9 inch heavy card, and the set enclosed in a neat port- 
folio, costing only 35 cents in heavy manila, or 50 cents in cloth. Circular free. 

W. A. Wilde &' Co., Boston and Chicago. 
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